Table 3.

Characteristics of swine and rodent stroke models. Abbreviations; MCA, middle cerebral artery; ICA, internal carotid artery; NHP, non-human primate.

Characteristic	Swine	Rodents
Brain mass	80–180 g (depending on strain and age), roughly 10x smaller than human [5,9]	0.3 g (mice), roughly 4500x smaller than human; 2 g (rat), roughly 700x smaller than human [9]
Cortex morphology	Gyrencephalic [5,6,7]	Lissencephalic [1]
Myelination timeline	Similar to human, from birth to early adulthood [6,12]	Ends a few days after birth [10]
White matter proportion	60%, same as humans [1,22,23], with similar connectivity [13]	10% [1,22,23]
Intracerebral vessel diameter	Large, human-like enough to allow the use of human endovascular devices [15,20]	Much smaller, complicating surgeries [15,20]
Cerebral irrigation	High collateralization, complicates stable infarction generation [85,87], with 2–4 MCAs per side [7,88,89]. Rete mirabile to access ICA [85,86]	Lower collateralization, more stable infarction [15], with 1 MCA per side [23], and without a rete [85,86].
Dura matter	Fibrous in swine, due to brain swelling generates a human-like ICP increase [14]	Delicate in rodents, rudimentary, and underdeveloped [14]
Neurological behavior	More sophisticated and inferable to human [3]	Simpler and less generalizable to human [3]
Genetics	Shorter phylogenetic distance with human [30,31]	Extended phylogenetic distance with human [30,31]
Size	Human-like depending on strain and age, allowing multimodal imaging sequences and instruments used in human [15,16], repeated and larger biological sample collection [3,29], and procedures and equipment from humans [2,3,8]	Much smaller, different imaging instruments [15,16], limited sample extraction [3,29], and different procedures and equipment [2,3,8]
Costs	Higher [15], but lower than NHP [12]	Lower [15]
Care and use	Difficult [15]	Easier [15]
Time to sexual maturity	Prolonged, but shorter than NHP [12]	Much shorter [15]