Evans Blue Dye: A Revisit of Its Applications in Biomedicine

Table 1

Characteristics of different blue dyes.

Dye	Molecular formula	Chemical structure	Number of –SO3H groups	Size (Da)	Max spectral absorption (nm)	% bound to plasma proteins [27]	Time of complete clearance from plasma (minutes) [1]	Applications in biomedicine
Methylene blue	C16H18ClN3S		0	320	670		<20	Treating methemoglobinemia [4, 27]
Patent blue	C27H31N2O6S2		2	567	640		<25	Detection of lymph nodes [3]
Trypan blue	C34H24N6Na4O14S4		4	961	600		<120	Staining biopsies, living cells, and organisms [2]
Evans blue	C34H24N6Na4O14S4		4	961	620		>120	Estimation of blood volume, detection of lymph nodes, localization of tumors, and so forth [6, 12, 18]