Blood flow measurements offer us a clear picture of cardiovascular health.
The accuracy of those measurements can make or break an experiment or emerging treatment option. Transonic’s flowprobes and flowsystems are the gold standard of flow measurement, providing high-resolution ultrasonic transit-time technology for animals of all sizes.
Transonic Flowprobes - Research Applications:
Acute Renal Blood Flow in Rabbits
Professor Kate Denton, Monash University
To explore the impact of ACE inhibitors on the structure and function of renal vasculature, Kate and her team monitored the vasculature of treated and untreated rabbits over the course of 12 weeks. The team took conscious recordings of blood pressure and renin activity, and then anesthetized the rabbits to take flow measurements using a microvascular flowprobe around the renal artery.
“Without the transonic flow probe system, we wouldn't have been able to get the detail that we did and see such clear differentiation between the signals,” Kate says, "it’s the real-time and continuous measurement that allowed us to show the differences between the treatment groups.”
Mesenteric Venous and Arterial Flow in Rats
Dr Tonja Emans, University of Auckland
The vasculature around the intestines, the mesenteric circulation, provides a kind of buffer area for blood pressure and circulation. It acts as a reservoir of circulation as we move from sitting to standing and vice-versa, supporting our blood pressure as our abdomen expands and contracts. The venous blood flow in this area is not well understood. Using flowprobes to record blood flow in both a mesenteric artery and vein, Tonja and her team examined the impact of hypertension on this crucial stabilising network of vasculature.
“With hypertensive animals, the increased blood volume was not contained in the mesenteric bed, it was actually squeezed out,” Tonja says, “this is an important finding, and we could only have acquired this with the flowprobe.”
Fetal Cardiovascular Development in Sheep
Dr Beth Allison, Hudson Institute of Medical Research
Fetal growth restriction impacts around 3-9% of births each year, subsequent failure to thrive in-utero may result in these babies being delivered early. This perinatal insult can have lifelong consequences for the cardiovascular system. Beth and her team examine how this early cardiovascular dysfunction impacts cardiovascular development by measuring the flow in the carotid and pulmonary arteries. By examining the waveform morphology of these arteries, they can assess the overall function of the cardiovascular system.
“I've worked with Transonic Flow Probes for my entire twenty-year career,” Beth says, “I feel like they're the one piece of kit that I always need to have in any of my grants because I could not do my research without them.”
Autonomic Cardiovascular Control in Sheep
Associate Professor Rohit Ramchandra, University of Auckland
During exercise, heart rate and cardiac output increase. The more intensely we exercise, the more blood flow is needed to clear cellular waste and deliver nutrients, allowing us to maintain the intensity of our activity. The assumption is that the sympathetic control of the heart must increase, and the parasympathetic control must decrease for the heart to move out of its baseline pattern and into a pattern with significantly more exertion. Rohit and his team examine the parasympathetic control of the heart during exercise by measuring blood flow in the aorta and the coronary arteries.
“This is still the only product that can give you really high-fidelity beat-to-beat recordings of blood flow," Rohit says, "we can keep these probes going for more than a month, depending on our experimental paradigm.”
