Speckle tracking echocardiography in the assessment of mouse models of cardiac dysfunction

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2-D) speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) accurately quantifies circumferential strain (S(circ)) and radial strain (S(rad)) in humans and in large and small animals. This study was performed to assess sensitivity of S(circ) and S(rad) to left ventricular (LV) dysfunction in mouse models. We performed 2-D and M-mode echocardiography 1) in 6 mice during superficial and profound isoflurane anesthesia, 2) serially in 12 mice to monitor the development of heart failure induced by transverse aortic constriction (TAC) and in 8 corresponding control mice, and 3) in 26 mice with varying degrees of TAC-induced heart failure and 12 corresponding control mice immediately before euthanasia. Fractional shortening (FS) and LV mass were measured from standard M-mode tracings, whereas S(circ) and S(rad) were derived by STE. Percent fibrosis and myocyte diameters were assessed from whole heart cross-sectional specimens stained by Masson trichrome. Profound isoflurane anesthesia decreased S(circ) (P = 0.027) but not S(rad) (P > 0.05). Mice subjected to TAC showed an immediate and sustained decrease in FS (P = 0.035), S(circ) (P = 0.016), and S(rad) (P = 0.012). S(circ) showed better correlation with FS (r = 0.56 and P < 0.0001) and LV mass (r = 0.42 and P = 0.0003) than S(rad) (r = 0.54 and P < 0.0001 for FS and r = 0.37 and P = 0.014 for LV mass, respectively). Percent fibrosis correlated better with S(circ) (r = 0.46 and P = 0.004) than with S(rad) (r = -0.32 and P = 0.05), whereas myocyte diameter showed similar correlation with both strains (r = 0.45 and r = -0.44, respectively, and P = 0.006 for both). STE correctly identifies LV dysfunction and histological changes in mice and can be used for the serial assessment of cardiac remodeling in murine models.

Speckle Tracking Echocardiography Detects Uremic Cardiomyopathy Early and Predicts Cardiovascular Mortality in ESRD

“…24 However, these authors observed a higher correlation for circumferential strain with interstitial fibrosis than for radial strain. 24 In a rat model of doxorubicin cardiomyopathy, Migrino et al observed an early reduction of radial strain after 8 weeks; the fractional shortening changed later, after 12 weeks.…”

“…STE has been used to gain further insight into the pathophysiology of cardiac ischemia and infarction, and several primary diseases of the myocardium, such as hypertrophic or diabetic cardiomyopathy. [16][17][18] It has recently been appreciated that STE can also be used to identify areas of myocardial fibrosis, [19][20][21][22][23][24] one of the hallmarks of UC. This prompted us to evaluate in an animal study whether STE can detect early changes of left ventricular function and correlates with histologically determined severity of myocardial fibrosis in rat models of UC.…”

Carotid arterial circumferential strain by two-dimensional speckle tracking: a novel parameter of arterial elasticity

“…Currently, 2DST is available to detect regional myocardial deformation in various cardiac diseases. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Furthermore, the sensitivity of high-frame 2DST in the circumferential direction was recently assessed in rat and mouse models with very thin myocardial thickness, 12,13 and this technique can be used in the clinical setting. Therefore, we applied it to the carotid arterial wall, because this technique enables the measurement of strain in very thin tissue segments with high reproducibility.…”

“…However, CS was semi-automatically measured using 2DST software with high reproducibility. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]12,13 The difference in measurement methods may account for the significantly better reproducibility of e circ compared with b. Second, e circ is a parameter Carotid arterial circumferential strain M Saito et al that directly measures the elasticity of the carotid arterial wall in the circumferential direction, whereas b is an indirect parameter that measures the change of the internal luminal diameter of the artery in the radial direction.…”

“…12,13 This application was capable of obtaining high-frame rate two-dimensional images. All images were recorded with a high frame rate (4100 frames s À1 ; mean frame rate: 143 ± 45 frames s À1 ).…”