Cardiac hypertrophy is a common condition and carries a substantial risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. While there have been notable successes in the identification of monogenic diseases causing severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the genes responsible for population variation in cardiac size have not been identified. Strategies to identify causative genes by genome wide-association studies have been implemented worldwide, but these studies are extensive with a vast cost. That

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... an alternative, simpler and more practical approach that narrows the potential genes needing intensive evaluation appealing. Model systems such as inbred recombinant strains of mice provide such an alternate approach to identify a genetic basis for underlying susceptibility to common diseases. However, significantly reduced mouse cardiovascular structure presents a technical challenge when attempting to visualise anatomic features such as congenital defects or left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy. Histological analysis of sectioned soft tissues has been traditionally recognised as the gold standard in identification of cardiovascular diseases. Nonetheless histology only provides a two-dimensional view of a sectioned sample, requires intensive manual handling, and is prone to artefacts in sample processing and preparation. X-ray absorption micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scan has recently attracted great attention in in-vivo and ex-vivo visualisation of small animal models and provides high resolution 3-Dimensional (3D) data, at a micrometre scale. The acquired images can be presented in multiple imaging planes and rapidly reconstructed thereby allowing a detailed assessment of cardiac anomalies without sample destruction. This technique is non-invasive and can be conducted without compromising the ability to further pursue downstream histological analysis. In this study we compared two common micro-CT scan staining agents for enhancement of soft tissues and their application for investigation of post-natal murine cardia [...]