Cardiac MRI of the normal and hypertrophied mouse heart

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Abstract
With the development of recent transgenic techniques, studies involving mice offer opportunities to increase understanding of cardiac disease. This provides motivation for the current study to perform noninvasive evaluation of the normal and hypertrophied mouse heart with MRI. By acquiring EGG and respiratory signals, the MR image acquisition was gated to both the cardiac and respiratory cycles. Combining a spin‐warp imaging sequence with an RF surface coil resulted in short‐axis images that allowed quantification of in vivo cardiac mass. Excellent agreement between MRI‐determined (y) and postmortem heart weight (x) was obtained: y = 0.991x + 1.43 (r = 0.996). Isoproterenol, at 282 μMmol/kg body weight (BW) and 573 μMmol/kg BW, induced a dose‐dependent increase in the ratio of heart weight to BW of 16.8 ± 1.09% and 24.1 ± 1.71 %, respectively, which was accurately measured by MRI. These results demonstrate the ability of MRI to non‐invasively monitor cardiac anatomy in the mouse.