The company is a member of the Bracco Group, a highly innovative health care group and world leader in global integrated solutions for the diagnostic imaging field. The Bracco Group is headquartered in Milan, Italy. Its North American operations consist of Bracco Diagnostics and Bracco Research USA, both located in Princeton, New Jersey. Bracco Diagnostics is one of the fastest growing developers and marketers of diagnostic pharmaceuticals in North America, with products for various imaging applications, including Isovue® (iopamidol) X-ray contrast agent, ProHance®, (gadoteridol), MRI contrast agent, and nuclear medicine products.
Gadoteridol has been available in Europe and the USA for several years. Holder of the Marketing Authorization: Bracco International B.V. - Strawinskylaan 3051 - 1077 ZX Amsterdam The Netherlands. (Contact: Kirk Deeter, Phone: +NL-303-838-8708)

The Bracco Group is the world's leading provider of global diagnostic imaging solutions, with net sales of more than 1 billion euro, of which more than 64% from international sales; it has operations in 115 countries and about 3,500 employees, of whom more than 600 work in R&D. Bracco invests around 15% of its turnover in R&D and has a portfolio of 1,500 patents worldwide. The Bracco Group deploys an integrated approach to diagnostic imaging, with an offer that encompasses contrast media, its core business where it is one of the world's top players, biomedical equipment from Esaote, one of the world's primary producers of magnetic resonance and ultrasonographic medical equipment, contrast media delivery systems from Acist Medical Systems, a top US company in advanced contrast media injection systems, and medical application software from EBIT-AET and Singapore's Volume Interactions, the leading developer of advanced medical software. Bracco has formed a high-level international research network, whose three centers in Milan, Geneva and Princeton study and develop products for the latest-generation diagnostic techniques, from X-rays and computerized axial tomography to magnetic resonance and echo contrast.

Ultrasound Contrast Agents:

From Bracco Research S. A., Geneva, Switzerland
BG1135 is a polymer-shelled new ultrasound contrast agent under development. The air-filled microsphere has a rigid, 100 nm thick polymeric shell and a mean diameter of 2.9 μm with 99% less than 8 μm.
The destruction mechanism of BG1135 is unique among microbubbles. The microbubbles of BG1135 appear to acquire a small shell defect, allowing the filling gas to stream out and creating a new gas bubble, but leaving the old shell intact. No significant differences between the diameters of the shells can be measured before and after insonation even though the agent is fragmented.

From Bracco Research SA, Geneva, Switzerland,
BR14 is a new experimental ultrasound contrast agent, consisting of bubbles containing a high molecular weight filling gas enclosed by a flexible phospholipid monolayer shell a few nanometers thick.
This agent shows significant non-linear scattering and agent modification even at low insonation pressures, the detection pulses used did not destroy the contrast bubbles. The results obtained with HPD before the release burst show that the BR14 bubbles are efficient scatterers that can be modified and, thus, detected by low power insonation.

E-Z-EM, Inc. was headquartered in New York and developed, manufactured and marketed diagnostic imaging products used by radiologists like the MRI bowel marker Gadolite® Oral Suspension.
In addition to medical diagnostics systems, the company's products included interventional devices, such as biopsy needles. E-Z-EM was also a third-party contract manufacturer of contrast media.

Bracco Diagnostics, Inc., the US-based subsidiary of Bracco Imaging S.p.A. and part of the Bracco Group, announced in Oct. 2007 that it has entered into a merger agreement to acquire E-Z-EM, Inc. (NASDAQ: EZEM). Bracco Imaging's portfolio offering has been broadened with completion of the acquisition in 2008.

From Bracco Diagnostics, Inc.
SonoVue® was first launched in October 2001 and is now available in all European countries.
SonoVue is a second generation USCA, designed and optimized with regard to the resistance to pressure. SonoVue is an example of an important family of microbubbles whose membrane consists of phospholipids. SonoVue microbubbles are filled with sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), a gas which has a low solubility and diffuses slowly in blood for the gaseous phase of the microbubbles.
In particular, the SonoVue microbubbles, thanks to the high flexibility of their shell, are strongly echogenic in a wide range of frequencies and acoustic pressure and therefore can be used with both destructive and conservative contrast bubble specific imaging methods.

See also Coherent Contrast Imaging.