Abstract

The aim of this study was to establish a feasible and robust magnetic resonance imaging protocol for the quantitative assessment of cardiac function in marmosets and to present normal values of cardiac function across different ages from young adult, middle-aged, to very old clinically healthy animals. Cardiac MRI of 33 anesthetized marmosets at the age of 2–15 years was performed at 9.4 T using IntraGate-FLASH that operates without any ECG-triggering and breath holding. Normalized to post-mortem heart weight, the left ventricular end-diastolic volume (LV-EDV) was significantly reduced in older marmosets. The LV end-systolic volume (LV-ESV) and the LV stroke volume (LV-SV) showed a similar trend while the LV ejection fraction (LV-EF) and wall thickening remained unchanged. Similar observations were made for the right ventricle. Moreover, the total ventricular myocardial volume was lower in older monkeys while no significant difference in heart weight was found. In conclusion, IntraGate-FLASH allowed for quantification of left ventricular cardiac function but seems to underestimate the volumes of the right ventricle. Although less strong and without significant sex differences, the observed age related changes were similar to previously reported findings in humans supporting marmosets as a model system for age related cardiovascular human diseases.

Highlights

  • The aim of this study was to establish a feasible and robust magnetic resonance imaging protocol for the quantitative assessment of cardiac function in marmosets and to present normal values of cardiac function across different ages from young adult, middle-aged, to very old clinically healthy animals

  • There is a lack of MR imaging protocols and reference values of cardiovascular Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in marmosets

  • To the best of our knowledge this study is the first report of cardiovascular MR in common marmosets

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Summary

Introduction

The aim of this study was to establish a feasible and robust magnetic resonance imaging protocol for the quantitative assessment of cardiac function in marmosets and to present normal values of cardiac function across different ages from young adult, middle-aged, to very old clinically healthy animals. Charnock et al.[10,11] showed that nutrition high in dietary fat can significantly influence the composition of cardiac membranes towards increased level of fatty acids Those marmosets showed an increased heart rate together with an increased left ventricular ejection fraction. The aim of this work was to establish a robust and feasible MRI protocol to measure the cardiac function of marmosets and to present average values of cardiac function across clinically healthy animals of different ages ranging from young adults (2 years) up to very old marmosets (15 years). Difficulties of, and possible solutions for, carrying out cardiovascular MRI of marmosets will be discussed

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