Laboratory and imaging techniques for pregnancy diagnosis in animals

Abstract

An accurate and early diagnosis of pregnancy is essential for better reproductive management in livestock and wild animals. Correct pregnancy diagnosis shorten the calving interval through early identification and maintain the animals dry period on regular time. In the absence of early and accurate detection of pregnancy important problems like high calving interval, late puberty, and high incidence of anestrous aggravates. There are several methods of pregnancy diagnosis in the domestic as well as wild animals and classified as visual, clinical and laboratory methods, yet there are limitations due to their sensitivity, accuracy, specificity, speed, and ease of performing the test. Laboratory methods of pregnancy diagnosis used in past and developed in recent years provided the results accurately. The advancement of molecular techniques like proteomics and their applications in animal research has given a new hope to look for pregnancy biomarker molecules in these animals. The present review provides a deep insight about the methods of pregnancy diagnosis in different species of animals while assessing the usefulness of the modern technology and discusses the future prospects.