From Lantheus Medical Imaging.
Activated DEFINITY® Injectable Suspension is indicated for use in patients with suboptimal echocardiograms to opacify the left ventricular chamber and to improve the delineation of the left ventricular endocardial border. The perflutren lipid microspheres exhibit lower acoustic impedance than blood and enhance the intrinsic backscatter of blood.
Echocardiography with Definity produced more detailed images of the heart in difficult-to-image patients versus echocardiography alone, and images obtained with the contrast agent provided a more accurate assessment of segmental wall motion compared with unenhanced images.

See also Coherent Contrast Imaging.

In August 2001 DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company received FDA approval.

Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc. engages in discovering, developing, and marketing medical imaging agents. Lantheus Medical Imaging has headquarters in North Billerica, Massachusetts, and offices in Puerto Rico, Canada, and Australia. During its history, the company launched the products Cardiolite (Technetium Tc99m Sestamibi Preparation Kit), which has become the gold standard for use in myocardial perfusion imaging, and Definity (perflutren lipid microsphere) for use in suboptimal echocardiograms.
From 2001 to 2008 Lantheus was part of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging, Inc. group.

Ultrasound Contrast Agents:

(CCI) A major limitation of the use of ultrasound contrast agents is the problem that signals from the microbubbles are mixed with those from tissue, so that the distribution of the microbubbles is not optimally displayed either in Doppler or gray scale.
Coherent contrast imaging is a high frame rate implementation of inverting the phase of alternate sound pulses and summing the resulting echoes. The symmetrical signals from linear reflectors are cancelled leaving those from non-linear scatterers, with the advantage that the cancellation is performed without the need to transmit two pulses per image line so that bubble destruction is minimized. Coherent contrast imaging yields best results in the vascular phase of phospholipid microbubbles (such as Definity and SonoVue).

See also Coherence.

Founded in 1991, ImaRx Pharmaceutical Corp. designs, develops and markets pharmaceuticals for medical imaging (MRI, ultrasound and computed tomography) for the radiological imaging industry.
ImaRx Pharmaceutical Corp., announced 1999 that it has been acquired by E.I DuPont de Nemours & Co., Inc. The terms of the acquisition provide a royalty-free licensing arrangement with a newly-formed company, ImaRx LLC ('LLC'), to pursue and develop new products and technologies for drug and gene delivery independent from DuPont. Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., ImaRx' licensee for Asian territories for this product, will continue to develop the product in Asia as DuPont's licensee. ImaRx LLC will have ownership of all other targeted and therapeutic products previously owned by ImaRx, including imaging products outside of diagnostic ultrasound imaging and two other imaging products, SonoRx® and LumenHance®, which are both FDA approved and licensed to BRACCO Diagnostics.
See also Lantheus Medical Imaging and Definity®.

Ultrasound Contrast Agents:

MRX 115 is a liposome based microbubble formulation and has been demonstrated as effective for cardiac blood pool imaging, Doppler enhancement and potentially myocardial perfusion imaging.
MRX 115 is based upon the demand for a stable, robust blood pool ultrasound contrast agents, also called DMP 115 or Aerosomes™ (ImaRx LLC) and now Definity®.