CINE Images of a Beating Rodent Cardiac Phantom

Steven Fortune¹, Ian Marshall¹, Maurits A. Jansen¹, Peter R. Hoskins¹, Tom Anderson¹

Small animal cardiac MRI is challenging due to small dimensions and fast heart rates. In order to assist in the development and testing of MRI sequences a rodent cardiac phantom has been designed and tested. It consists of a single chamber of PVAC housed in a water bath, expanded by an external pump. Initial CINE images of the phantom show this phantom functions with similar parameters to a rat left ventricle. Strong flow artefacts are present in the image. Thus this phantom could be used for the development of flow compensation methods as well as fast imaging methods.