Figure 7. Collateral dependent blood flow measurements made after transient repetitive myocardia ischemia (RI) studies using the automated balloon catheter inflation device described in this manuscript displayed greatly reduced variance compared to blood flow measurements made after transient ischemia using manual inflation.

Blood flow measurements made in WKY rats after using the automated inflation device (A–C) not only displayed greatly reduced variance than our previous manual inflation studies (compare to Figure 2 in Toyota, et al., 2005) [23], but also required fewer animals to complete a similar study (n = 3 or n = 6, compared to n = 9, for a study group). Note that panel C represents data from panels A and B combined. Similarly, blood flow measurements made in SD rats after manual inflation (D, E) had such high variance that they were not statistically significant (even with an n = 12), while measurements made after automated inflation (compare to Figure 7 in Dodd, et al., 2011 and Figure 4C in Hutcheson, et al., 2013) [24] achieved a high level of significance (p<0.05) with fewer animals (n = 5 and n = 7, respectively). A summary of results with coefficients of variation is given in Table 1.