The primary use for poligeenan is for clinical diagnostic applications, and specifically the suspension of barium sulfate slurries used in X-ray studies of the mouth, throat, and esophagus during swallowing.
For this application, poligeenan delivers three essential properties: First, its viscosity imparts lubricity to make the slurry easier to swallow.
Second, this same viscosity is high enough to maintain full suspension of all barium sulfate particles during the complete X-ray procedure.
In 1969, Adrian Julian Marcus and James Watt demonstrated that poligeenan could induce gastrointestinal lesions in animal models,[6] which was followed by decades of medical research using the substance to study inflammatory bowel disease.
Carrageenan in solution is processed at low pH (~1.0) and high temperature (90 °C (190 °F)) for up to six hours until the weight-average molecular weight (Mw) has been reduced to the range 10,000 – 20,000 daltons (10–20 kDa).