Current trends in the development of contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging

Any method of visualization is based on the ability of eye to differentiate between regions of an image according to the brightness. In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tomography, the image is constructed based on magnetic characteristics of tissues such as the proton density (p) and relaxation times, T1 and T2. The use of MRI contrast agents is currently a wellestablished clinical practice all over the world. A lot of R&D projects for development of new, more effective, MRI contrast agents are currently carried out. This paper gives an overview of main trends in MRI contrast agent development and presents data of preliminary animal studies of a new gadolinium-based contrast agent.