Murine echocardiography: a practical approach for phenotyping genetically manipulated and surgically modeled mice

There have now been literally hundreds of genetically manipulated mouse models developed during the past decade of cardiac research. Echocardiography is considered an extremely important tool to noninvasively assess and serially follow the phenotype of genetically and surgically altered mice. This review describes in detail the technical considerations, various routinely used methods to assess cardiac function, and some emerging techniques in the assessment of cardiac function in experimental mouse models of cardiac disease.