Transthoracic Echocardiography in Models of Cardiac Disease in the Mouse

Abstract

These studies provide the first application of transthoracic echocardiography for morphological/functional characterization of the cardiac phenotype in transgenic and surgical murine models, including (1) high reliability for detecting LV chamber dilation and function; (2) reliability (and its limits) for determining abnormal LV wall thickness and LV mass; (3) identification of marked, sometimes asymmetrical, hypertrophy in a transgenic model of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; and (4) usefulness for transgenic colony screening to identify markedly abnormal phenotypes.