Nanoparticle contrast agents for cardiovascular medical imaging

Over the last ten years, nanoparticles have become increasingly studied as contrast agents for medical imaging. This is due to their unique contrast-generating properties as well as their potentially long circulation half-lives, their high payload and the ease of integrating multiple properties. In particular, they are highly effective for molecular imaging, the non-invasive visualization of the levels of molecules or cell types. Cardiovascular diseases are particularly interesting to study with molecular imaging because of the multiple processes and stages involved and therefore the many cell types and molecules that are important in these diseases. Nanoparticle contrast agents that have been used in conjunction with cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, nuclear imaging techniques or ultrasound include iron oxides, micelles, liposomes, emulsions, gold nanoparticles, quantum dots and lipoproteins. In addition to the above-mentioned technological aspects we highlight several examples of the use of nanoparticles in cardiovascular imaging as case studies at the end of this chapter.