[Status and development of new clinical contrast media for MR diagnosis of liver diseases].

MR contrast agents are developed for pharmaceutical manipulation of tissue signal intensities. Today it is widely recognized that MR contrast agents will play an increasingly important role in MR imaging of the liver. Contrast-enhanced MR-imaging allows to obtain simultaneously dynamic physiologic information and high anatomic detail. Up to now three major classes of MR contrast agents are available for clinical MR-imaging of the liver. These include paramagnetic perfusion agents, hepatobiliary agents, and super-paramagnetic RES-specific iron oxide particles. A fourth class of contrast agents now in use for animal experiments includes ultra-small super-paramagnetic particles which can be targeted to extra-reticuloendothelial structures such as asialoglycoprotein receptors of hepatocytes. In this article, we review recent advances in the development of MR contrast media and the clinical status of contrast-enhanced MR imaging of the liver.