Engineering Responsive Ultrasound Contrast Agents Through Crosslinked Networks on Lipid-Shelled Microbubbles.

Ultrasound imaging with contrast agents, especially with lipid-shelled microbubbles, has become a vital tool in clinical diagnostics. Efforts to adapt these agents for molecular imaging have typically focused on targeted binding. More recently, crosslinking the lipid shell to alter its mechanical properties, followed by decrosslinking upon exposure to a stimulus, has been shown as a promising approach for imaging soluble molecular targets.