Abstract #0016

Shi Z, Freay L, Sharp B, Tidwell A, Abuin A, Ding Z

We report here a cardiac MRI protocol for rapid and repeated assessment of myocardial hypertrophy in mice. A modified fast gradient-echo cine sequence gated to both ECG and respiratory motion was used to measure mid-ventricular LV mass at days 0 and 7 of isoproterenol treatment in the same animal. Using this protocol, development of LV hypertrophy in all animals and an attenuation of the hypertrophy in animals receiving additional treatment of Enalapril was demonstrated. This non-invasive MRI method proved to be fast (18 min/animal), accurate, and more sensitive than autopsy due to its baseline-control capability.