A method of studying the course of myocardial ischemia and reperfusion in rats in vivo

Background The use of MRI for the study of ischemia and its consequences in small animals has been limited by the need for a thoracotomy and operative occlusion of the coronary arteries. The trauma of the surgery may be an important confounder in this open-chest model. The closure of the coronaries with a suture does not allow multiple occlusion-reperfusion cycles, and has limited the study of ischemia/reperfusion in small animals. The purpose of this study was to develop a “closed chest” model of ischemia/reperfusion, which would allow ischemia and infarction to be studied in real-time while the rat is in the MRI environment.