Any molecule used to measure organ perfusion in conjunction with imaging.
Characteristics of good perfusion agents:
Perfusion agents used in MRI are small Gd-chelates (they do not cross blood brain barrier, but extravasate quickly into extracellular space in other organs) and SPIOS.

Lantheus Medical Imaging is a worldwide leader in medical imaging, with headquarters in North Billerica, Massachusetts, and nearly 700 employees worldwide with offices in Puerto Rico, Canada, and Australia.
The product portfolio includes ABLAVAR™ (gadofosveset trisodium) a blood pool contrast agent for magnetic resonance angiography MRA, Cardiolite® (Kit for the preparation of Technetium Tc99m Sestamibi), a cardiac perfusion imaging agent and DEFINITY® Vial for (Perflutren Lipid Microsphere) injectable suspension, the leading cardiac ultrasound contrast agent in the US.

MRI Contrast Agents:

Contrast enhanced MRI is a commonly used procedure in magnetic resonance imaging. The need to more accurately characterize different types of lesions and to detect all malignant lesions is the main reason for the use of intravenous contrast agents.
Some methods are available to improve the contrast of different tissues. The focus of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) is on contrast kinetics with demands for spatial resolution dependent on the application. DCE-MR imaging is used for diagnosis of cancer (see also liver imaging, abdominal imaging, breast MRI, dynamic scanning) as well as for diagnosis of cardiac infarction (see perfusion imaging, cardiac MRI). Quantitative DCE-MRI requires special data acquisition techniques and analysis software.
Contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CE-MRA) allows the visualization of vessels and the temporal resolution provides a separation of arteries and veins. These methods share the need for acquisition methods with high temporal and spatial resolution.
Double contrast administration (combined contrast enhanced (CCE) MRI) uses two contrast agents with complementary mechanisms e.g., superparamagnetic iron oxide to darken the background liver and gadolinium to brighten the vessels. A variety of different categories of contrast agents are currently available for clinical use.
Reasons for the use of contrast agents in MRI scans are:
Common Indications:
Brain MRI : Preoperative/pretreatment evaluation and postoperative evaluation of brain tumor therapy, CNS infections, noninfectious inflammatory disease and meningeal disease.
Spine MRI : Infection/inflammatory disease, primary tumors, drop metastases, initial evaluation of syrinx, postoperative evaluation of the lumbar spine: disk vs. scar.
Breast MRI : Detection of breast cancer in case of dense breasts, implants, malignant lymph nodes, or scarring after treatment for breast cancer, diagnosis of a suspicious breast lesion in order to avoid biopsy.

For Ultrasound Imaging (USI) see Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound at Medical-Ultrasound-Imaging.com. See also Blood Pool Agents, Myocardial Late Enhancement, Cardiovascular Imaging, Contrast Enhanced MR Venography, Contrast Resolution, Dynamic Scanning, Lung Imaging, Hepatobiliary Contrast Agents, Contrast Medium and MRI Guided Biopsy.

Lung imaging is furthermore a challenge in MRI because of the predominance of air within the lungs and associated susceptibility issues as well as low signal to noise of the inflated lung parenchyma. Cardiac and respiratory triggered or breath hold sequences allow diagnostic imaging, however a comparable image quality with computed tomography is still difficult to achieve.
Assumptions for lung MRI:
The current trends in MRI are the use of new imaging technologies and increasingly powerful magnetic fields. Among these technologies are parallel imaging techniques as well as ventilation agents like hyperpolarized helium for the use as an inert inhalational contrast agent to study lung ventilation properties. With hyperpolarized gases clear images of the lungs can be obtained without using a large magnetic field (see also back projection imaging). Single shot sequences (e.g. TSE or Half Fourier Acquisition Single Shot Turbo Spin Echo HASTE) used in lung MR imaging benefits from parallel imaging techniques due to reduced relaxation time effects during the echo train and therefore reduced image blurring as well as reduced motion artifacts.
In the future, more effective contrast agents may provide an alternative solution to the need for high field MRI. Dynamic contrast enhanced MRI perfusion has demonstrated a potential in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism or to characterize lung cancer and mediastinal tumors. 3D contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography of the thoracic vessel.

See also the related poll result: 'MRI will have replaced 50% of x-ray exams by'

(ASL) A MR image can be sensitized to the effect of inflowing blood spins if those spins are in a different magnetic state to that of the static tissue. Techniques known as ASL techniques uses this idea by magnetically labeling blood flowing into the slices of interest. Contrast agents are not required for these techniques. This perfusion measurement is completely noninvasive.
Blood flowing into the imaging slice exchanges with tissue water, altering the tissue magnetization. A perfusion-weighted image can be generated by the subtraction of an image in which inflowing spins have been labeled from an image in which spin labeling has not been performed. Quantitative perfusion maps can be calculated if other parameters (such as tissue T1 and the efficiency of spin labeling) also are measured.