Relationship of Infarct Size and Cardiac Functions in the Hyper-acute Phase of Myocardial Ischaemia-Reperfusion in Rats

INTRODUCTION – Therapeutic studies in small animal models of myocardial infarction (MI) often rely on ex vivo infarct size as an efficacy endpoint. Recently, measurement of in vivo cardiac function using MRI has become a popular method to monitor treatment effects in addition to infarct size measurement. In chronic MI, infarct size has been shown to closely correlate to deterioration in cardiac functions, and is a predictor of poor prognosis in the long term. However, the relationship between infarct size and cardiac functions in the hyper-acute phase (i.e. hours) following MI has not been fully explored. We aim to investigate this relationship using cardiac MRI with Gd-DTPA delayed-enhancement and ex vivo TTC-viability assay.