In vivo visualization of cardiac function for small animal physiology is essential for the understanding of cardiovascular function in Man. Rat and murine (mouse) models have been developed to investigate cardiac physiology and metabolism in both the normal and diseased heart. Emerging techniques using grasshoppers and zebra fish embryos may enable scientists to understand developmental anomalies in the human heart.

The most common human birth defects are problems with the heart. In utero diagnosis using fetal echocardiography provides the best opportunity to plan and manage these problems once the baby is born. Conditions in the mother where fetal echo may be indicated include diabetes, use of anticonvulsant medication, autoimmune disease, certain viral infections and a previous child with congenital heart disease. Cardiac abnormalities in the fetus detected at 18-week ultrasound scan may also prompt a fetal echo examination.

Fetal echocardiography is safe and accurate. It is capable of detecting almost 100% of all serious heart defects, compared with only a third that are picked up on ultrasound. Challenges associated with fetal echo include the small size of the structures under investigation coupled with random fetal movements. While there are those who argue that fetal echo should be offered to all expectant mothers, others fear that cost and an insufficiency of staff qualified to perform the test make this ideal prospect prohibitive.

Dysfunction in the left ventricle (LV) is a hallmark of cardiac disease. Analysis by speckle-tracking imaging is an emergent tool for evaluating LF function. The interference of ultrasonic beams focused on the heart muscle tissue produces characteristic patterns of speckles.

Sonimicrometry is the used to evaluate these speckle patterns. Implanting piezoelectric transducers in between individual muscle fibers enables the measurement of changes in their length. As a result, minor defects may be visualized prior to their functional manifestation. Defects may be experimentally induced by surgical injury or by genetic engineering.

Positron emission tomography (PET) scanning produces three-dimensional images of physiological processes in the body. High resolution small animal scanners enable investigations of myocardial blood flow, function and metabolism in the rat heart. This technique is non invasive, thereby permitting the repetitive imaging of the same animal in order to follow disease progression and assessment of new therapies.

The circulatory fluid found in arthropods and some insects is called hemolymph. In grasshoppers, hemolymph flow has been studied by synchrotron x-ray phase contrast imaging. Microbubbles are used as high contrast tracer particles. While the circulatory anatomy and physiology of humans and grasshoppers are fundamentally very different, synchrotron imaging may one day be adapted for studying blood flow in developing human embryos.

Visualization of cardiac function for small animal physiology in the living organism is crucial to our understanding of our own heart function. Safe and accurate, fetal echo is used to detect congenital heart defects (CHD) in the human fetus. Eventually, new techniques such as synchrotron x-rays, speckle-tracking ultrasound and high resolution PET scanning may be added to our repertoire for studying normal and diseased cardiac function during the course of human development.

The world leader in real time, high resolution, micro-imaging systems, providing modalities in the areas of in vivo imaging, cancer metastasis, rat heart imaging, and more.

The world leader in real time, high resolution, micro-imaging systems, providing modalities in the areas of in vivo imaging, http://www.visualsonics.com/photoacoustics-cancer cancer metastasis, http://www.visualsonics.com/cardiovascular rat heart imaging, and more.

Author Bio: The world leader in real time, high resolution, micro-imaging systems, providing modalities in the areas of in vivo imaging, cancer metastasis, rat heart imaging, and more.

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