Echocardiography application in experiments on small laboratory animals

Rabbit heart echocardiogram was compared with autopsy measurements for assessing the accuracy of the non-invasive method in small animals. The correlation coefficient of these measurements was 0.72 for p less than 0.01. Besides that, the site of ultrasound probe application for heart visualization from the left and right side of the chest was determined. It is stressed that the rules accepted for echocardiographic investigations in man must be applied with caution and criticism to the animals because of different shape of the heart and chest wall.