Medical ultrasound is one of the most prevalent imaging techniques used for diagnosing patients.
The technique allows for the visualization of tissues in the human body. Compared
to competing imaging techniques such as CT or MRI, medical ultrasound has numerous
advantages: it is real-time, safe (no radiation is involved), inexpensive and portable. Over
the years medical ultrasound equipment has become smaller and the image quality has improved
considerably. Similar to CT or MRI, contrast agents are also used in
medical ultrasound. Their use comprises e.g. endocardial border delineation, the improvement
of blood flow detection using Doppler methods in cardiology and radiology, and the
visualization of malignant tumors (Emmer, 2009; Vos, 2010).
Ultrasound is also commonly used for therapeutic applications such as High Intensity Focused
Ultrasound (HIFU), which is used for the noninvasive treatment of tumors by ablation,
and extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, which is used for the noninvasive treatment
of urinary calculosis and biliary calculi. The therapeutic applications for contrast agents are
currently under research and range from the stimulated uptake of bioactive materials (van
Wamel et al., 2006), to drug delivery (Kooiman et al., 2009) and the treatment of tumors
by bloodvessel destruction (Skyba et al., 1998).http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20772/100701_Neer%2C%20Paul%20Louis%20Maria%20Joseph%20van.pdf
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