Monitoring of cardiovascular functions constitutes an important part of the phenotypic characterization of an animal model. The same technologies are also employed when cardiovascular variables are used as efficacy or safety endpoints in novel therapeutic interventions. Methods available for cardiovascular studies in rodents include telemetric monitoring of blood pressure and heart rate in awake animals, instrumentation of anesthetized animals and in vitro assessment of cardiac and vascular functions (incl. ultrasound imaging, isometric micromyography, Langendorff perfused heart preparation and Radnoti working heart model).
