Rat model for acute myocardial infarction: application to technetium-labeled glucoheptonate, tetracycline, and polyphosphate.

Cauterization of rat myocardium serves as a quick (2 min) inexpensive technique to create an animal model of acute myocardial infarction useful in evaluating radiopharmaceuticals as potential clinical imaging agents. Preliminary evidence indicates that is correlates well with behavior in man. Application of the model led to the discovery, confirmed by later investigators, that chelating agents such as glucoheptonate and polyphosphate show significant uptake in recent myocardial lesions.