Evaluation of Tissue Perfusion in a Rat Model of Hindlimb Muscle Iscbemia Using First-Pass Contrast Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MN)

Introduction In patients with peripheral vascular disease, skeletal muscle is inadequately perfused during exercise. Femoral artery ligation has been used as an animal model for peripheral vascular disease (1,2). First-pass dynamic contrast enhanced MRI has been used for assessment of tissue perfusion to study myocardial ischemia (3,4). Few studies have yet applied this technique to the study of skeletal muscle. The goal of this study was to evaluate the chronic changes in tissue perfusion by measuring the firstpass uptake of the contrast agent, Gd-DTPA, in rat hindlimb muscle after femoral artery ligation both at rest and during stimulation-induced hyperemia. Methods with time from 29+8% on day 2 to 68+5% of the normal level on day 42, which was still significantly (pligated limb (Figure 2).