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AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the United States Department of Energy
InventorsPaul H. Smith, James R. Brainard, Gordon D. Jarvinen, Robert R. Ryan
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A family of contrast agents for use in magnetic resonance imaging and a method of enhancing the contrast of magnetic resonance images of an object by incorporating a contrast agent of this invention into the object prior to forming the images or during formation of the images. A contrast agent of this invention is a paramagnetic lanthanide hexaazamacrocyclic molecule, where a basic example has the formula LnC.sub.16 H.sub.14 N.sub.6. Important applications of the invention are in medical diagnosis, treatment, and research, where images of portions of a human body are formed by means of magnetic resonance techniques.
A method of enhancing contrast of a magnetic resonance image of a living organism by incorporating a contrast agent into the organism, in an amount effective to enhance contrast of the image, prior to forming the image or during formation of the image, where said contrast agent is a paramagnetic lanthanide hexaazamacrocyclic molecule and has the structural formula ##STR1## where the symbol ##STR2## and the symbol ##STR3## denotes a constituent of the contrast agent chosen from a group consisting of five constituents having the structures ##STR4## and where R represents a hydrogen atom or a substituent group chosen from a class consisting of alkyl, alkoxy, acyl, aroxy, alkylamine, aryl, hydroxy, aryloxy, amine, carboxylate, phosphate, and sufonate groups.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.