High-resolution echocardiographic assessment of infarct size and cardiac function in mice with myocardial infarction

The aim of this study was to develop a simple and reasonably precise echocardiographic method for the assessment of infarct size (IS) and cardiac dysfunction in mice after myocardial infarction.

In vivo experiments were performed in C57BL/6J wild-type mice (n = 18) before and 48 hours after left anterior descending coronary artery ligation. Endocardial length-based echocardiographic IS was validated with that by three different histologic measurements. Left ventricular function was evaluated.

Excellent agreement was found between endocardial length-based echocardiographic measurement and angle-based histologic measurement of IS (r = 0.82, P < .001), and both methods strongly correlated with Tei index (r = 0.82, P < .001, and r = 0.74, P < .01) and fractional area change (r = -0.61, P < .05, and r = -0.81, P < .001).

Endocardial length-based echocardiographic measurement proved to be a useful method for assessing myocardial IS and is applicable for biomedical and imaging research, and appears particularly promising in studies of left ventricular remodeling after myocardial infarction.