Heart failure is a leading cause of death and hospitalization in Sweden today, with a prevalence of between 200 000 to 300 000 subjects. Heart failure is characterized by increased intracardiac pressures and declining output of blood, representing the end-result of many different etiologies that adversely affect cardiac structure and function. Increasing availability of etiology-specific therapies makes early identification of underlying etiology warranted, to prevent progress to end-stage heart failure. Cardiac function is rapidly and easily evaluated with echocardiography, but many etiologies cannot be readily discerned based on this modality, necessitating the use of a range of costly and time-consuming modalities with risk for adverse effects such as endomyocardial biopsy, nuclear medicine imaging, and magnetic resonance imaging.

The objective of this project is to perform pre-clinical studies to evaluate the use of photoacoustic imaging as a complement to echocardiography to non-invasively identify distinct etiologies contributing to heart failure, allowing early and cause-specific therapy.