A sachet of powder, mixed with water.
Made from grains and food-grade botanical ingredients. Not a drug; no iodine, no gadolinium, no radiation. It does one thing: it distends the collapsed stomach and fills it with a uniform, stable, echogenic medium — opening a window directly in front of the pancreas so the beam has a path, and the same path every time.
What’s in it.
The principal ingredients are grains and food-grade botanical ingredients. The list shows the principal ingredients, not the complete formulation.
| Form | Instant powder, in sachets |
| Pack sizes | 30 g / 50 g / 60 g / 130 g / 600 g |
| Preparation | Mixed with about 500 mL of hot water and drunk |
| Typical adult quantity | About 50 g per examination |
| Pediatric quantity | About one-third of the adult quantity at age 5; about one-tenth at age 1 |
| Before the examination | Fasting for 8–12 hours |
| Moisture content | ≤ 8% |
| Shelf life | 12 months |
| China registration | NMPA Class II medical device registration certificate 浙械注准20212060179 |
| Manufacturing license | 浙药监械生产许20100095号 |
| Manufacturer | Huzhou East Asia Pharmaceutical Products Co., Ltd. (AIMED’s parent company, 85% shareholder) |
What it actually does.
In one sentence: it paves the stretch of road the ultrasound beam cannot cross.
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On an empty stomach, three things stand in front of the pancreas
The pancreas is retroperitoneal — one of the deepest organs in the abdomen. To reach it, the beam must pass the abdominal wall and its fat, the collapsed stomach, and then the transverse colon and duodenum.
The collapsed stomach. Fasting, the gastric walls lie against each other, with only a little mucus and a few scattered gas pockets between them: no uniform medium to carry sound, and no distension to show the wall’s layers.
Bowel gas. Gas in the transverse colon, the duodenum and the gastric fundus casts shadows over the pancreas; a gas interface reflects nearly the whole beam. This is the most frequently cited cause in the literature.
Depth and fat. Abdominal-wall and mesenteric fat attenuate the beam, and the tail suffers most. One study found that a waist circumference above 84 cm predicted poor pancreatic visualization (Marsico 2016, AUC 0.864). -
After drinking: the stomach distends, microbubbles move in
About 500 mL of the prepared agent is a high-viscosity suspension. It distends the collapsed stomach, displaces the gas pockets and contents that were there, and fills the lumen with a large number of uniformly dispersed microbubbles; the distended stomach also pushes gas-containing bowel loops aside. The stomach goes from a collapsed sac to a cavity filled with a uniform medium, sitting directly in front of the pancreas — in the field’s own phrase, the hollow organ becomes examinable like a solid one.
This addresses the first two obstacles: collapse and bowel gas. The third — depth and fat — no oral medium can address, which is why the pancreatic tail remains the hardest region in heavier patients.
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The microbubbles are what make it echogenic
They form a uniform echogenic interface. The layers of the gastric wall stand out against this uniform background; for the deeper organs, the uniform medium is a stable acoustic window through which the beam reaches the pancreatic head, body and tail, as well as the biliary tract and parts of the liver.
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It is stable; water is not
Water is anechoic and should, in principle, make the best window. But water in a stomach is never a glass of pure water: residual free gas rises as large bubbles to the surface and shifts with breathing and position, mucus and food debris float in it, and peristalsis keeps stirring. The gas–fluid interface produces strong reflections and reverberation artifacts, and the window comes and goes. That is why the water protocols in the literature depend on repositioning the patient.
The microbubbles in the agent are held in place by the viscous medium: they do not rise, coalesce, or redistribute with breathing or position. Both are “gas.” Large moving bubbles block ultrasound; small fixed ones become a uniform echogenic medium. Once the window is established, it stays open for the whole examination — which is exactly what a standardized acquisition requires.
Where the evidence stands
“A uniform echogenic medium performs better than plain water” is one of the central grounds of Chinese expert consensus on oral agents: the Shanghai 2020 consensus graded echogenic oral agents for gastric ultrasound as level A and plain water as level B. That grading concerns gastric imaging.
For the pancreas: the prospective study at Peking Union Medical College Hospital found that the proportion of lesions with a satisfactory acoustic window rose from 30% to 80% after the agent, but that study had no plain-water control arm; and the only head-to-head study of pancreatic visualization (Ishigami 2014, using a cellulose-based agent from a different formulation family) found that water with simethicone performed better. The accurate statement is this: the mechanism is the one this product category was built on, but for the pancreas it has not yet been compared directly against water — and that comparison is, in our view, the study this field is missing.
Why its safety threshold is low.
Not a drug
Made from grains and edible botanicals. Contains no iodinated contrast, no gadolinium and no injectable microbubbles. It is not given intravascularly and does not enter the bloodstream.
No radiation
Ultrasound uses no ionizing radiation, and the agent introduces no radioactive material. The examination can be repeated in the same patient.
No new equipment
Compatible with standard abdominal ultrasound systems; no special probe or console is required. The examination takes place in the existing ultrasound room.
The common complaints are transient nausea, bloating or a sense of fullness, which usually settle with rest. Any decision about suitability or contraindication in an individual patient is made by the physician responsible for that examination. Nothing on this page is medical advice.
Interested, or thinking about working together?
Research collaboration, distribution partnerships, or simply a conversation about the technology — all are welcome. We do not currently operate in North America, but we are open to the conversation.