About the Authors

Jonas Dörner

Affiliation Department of Medicine/Cardiology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Rafael Struck

Affiliation Department of Medicine/Cardiology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Sebastian Zimmer

Affiliation Department of Medicine/Cardiology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Christine Peigney

Affiliation Department of Cardiac Surgery, University Clinical Center Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Georg Daniel Duerr

Affiliation Department of Cardiac Surgery, University Clinical Center Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Oliver Dewald

Affiliation Department of Cardiac Surgery, University Clinical Center Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Se-Chan Kim

Affiliation Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Daniela Malan

Affiliation Institute of Physiology I, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Thierry Bettinger

Affiliation Bracco Suisse SA, Geneva Research Center, Plan-les Ouates, Switzerland

Georg Nickenig

Affiliation Department of Medicine/Cardiology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Alexander Ghanem

ghanem@uni-bonn.de

Affiliation Department of Medicine/Cardiology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interest. Thierry Bettinger is employed by Bracco Suisse SA and provided the commercially available micro bubbles (BR1) for this study. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Revised the manuscript: JD RS SZ CP GDD OD SCK DM TB GN AG. Conceived and designed the experiments: GN AG. Performed the experiments: JD RS CP GDD AG. Analyzed the data: JD RS SZ OD DM AG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CP OD SCK DM TB AG. Wrote the paper: JD AG.