Echocardiographic quantitation of myocardial texture for diagnosis of early cardiomyopathy (CMP) remains problematic. Conventional statistical methods are limited, contributed by a small image region-of-interest (ROI) and difficulty in discrimination from noise. This study was performed to evaluate the 2-D Haar wavelet decomposition method as a tool to identify textural changes in a rat model of early CMP, focusing on changes that occur before development of M-mode structural abnormalities. Early diabetic CMP, ethanol CMP and diabetic-ethanol CMP rat models were evaluated. Echocardiography was performed on two groups of rats. Group I (5 week cohort, n = 4 per subgroup) included controls, rats on 12% ethanol, a diabetic subgroup, and diabetic rats on 4% ethanol. Group II (10 week cohort, n = 5 per subgroup) included the same categories as group I with an additional subgroup taking 4% ethanol was also studied. M-mode left ventricular measurements were comparable in all subgroups of group I. However, diabetic rats in group II had an increased left ventricular dimension (LVD) compared to all others and an increased septal dimension (IVSD) and posterior wall dimension (PWD) were noted in the 4% and 12% ethanol groups. End-diastolic digital images of all rats in the parasternal short axis view, at the papillary muscle level, were downloaded to a computer. A 16 x 16 (ROI) was selected from the anterior interventricular septum. Although standard statistical methods could not differentiate any of the groups, calculation of textural energy and normalized textural energy with the 2-D Haar wavelet decomposition method found at 5 weeks increased normalized texture energy in diabetics compared to all others. At 10 weeks increased texture energy was noted in diabetics. Diabetic-ethanol rats at both 5 and 10 weeks revealed a blunted textural energy compared to diabetic rats. In a rat model of diabetic cardiomyopathy, the 2-D wavelet decomposition method identified textural energy changes before development of echocardiographic structural changes. Ethanol-associated blunting of textural changes in diabetic rats was also noted. This method for quantitation of ventricular texture may be relevant for diagnosis of early cardiomyopathy.