Table 2.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Traditional Evan's Blue/TTC Technique, Vs the 3D MPIO/Gd MRI Approach

Evan's Blue/TTC	3D MPIO/Gd MRI
Requires IV tail injections	Requires IV tail injections
Requires re‐ligation of culprit vessel	Requires re‐ligation of culprit vessel
Assessment is postmortem, excluding possibility of serial study	Assessment is postmortem, excluding possibility of serial study
Relies on physical cutting of 2‐mm slices of fresh postmortem heart, on average resulting in 5 slices for 1 rat heart	High resolution, with slice thickness not limited at a practical level (eg, we acquired 48 “slices” for 1 heart)
Assumptions made that AAR/MI same across the volume of the 2‐mm slice	No requirement for assumptions due to high number of slices and high resolution
Evan's Blue can diffuse across the border zones, making rapid assessment essential, and reducing the clarity of measurement	MPIO appears to be more restricted in its diffusion, and the border zones are seen clearly even 1 week postfixation
Requires manual tracing of borders, and calculation of volumes for MI and AAR	Extremely suited to 3D digital analysis and automated segmentation
Difficult to easily assess corresponding myocardium between slices	Extremely easy for operator to scroll through slices, and examine anatomic relationships to reduce error

AAR indicates area at risk; 3D, 3‐dimensional; MI, myocardial infarction; MPIO/Gd, microparticles of iron oxide/gadolinium; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; TTC, triphenyl tetrazolium chloride.