Within-day and between-day variability of transthoracic anatomic M-mode echocardiography in the awake bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

The use of transthoracic echocardiography in dolphins has been limited so far owing to technical and anatomical specificities. Anatomic M-mode (AMM) is a postprocessing echocardiographic technique generating M-mode studies from two-dimensional (2D) cineloops independently of the ultrasound beam orientation. The aim of the present study was to determine the within-day (repeatability) and between-day (reproducibility) variability of AMM echocardiography in awake healthy bottlenose dolphins (BN, Tursiops truncatus).