Heart failure diagnosis without invasive procedures

Doctor Sara Hungerford, University of Sydney

Postdoctoral Fellowship and Vanguard Grant - 2 Year

Years funded: 2025 - 2026

Hemodynamic monitoring has shown benefit in improving outcomes and reducing hospitalisations for patients with heart failure (HF). Current methods to assess cardiovascular hemodynamics rely on invasive cardiac catheterisation procedures, which carry risk. Our project aims to revolutionise how we perform these measurements, reproducing them entirely non-invasively with an integrated echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound) platform, incorporating radial applanation tonometry (a wrist bracelet to measure arterial pressure) with custom-built software.

• Aim 1: Design a novel, non-invasive platform for integrated hemodynamic data acquisition by combining Doppler-derived flow data and radial applanation tonometry-derived pressure data.
• Aim 2: Develop customised software for the integrated platform to autonomously process and analyse of pressure-flow data.
• Aim 3: Validate the accuracy and reliability of the integrated platform against the current ‘gold-standard’ of invasive cardiac catheterisation.
• Aim 4: Evaluate and compare the performance of the integrated platform across a range of HF conditions and patient populations.

Research Plan

We will retrofit our existing radial applanation tonometer to pair with a digital converter and echocardiography machine (Aim 1). We will custom-write code to develop computer software compatible with the ‘digital sandbox’ function on the echocardiography machine (Aim 2). Once Aims 1 and 2 have been completed, we will validate the accuracy and reliability of our integrated platform against the current ‘gold-standard’ of invasive cardiac catheterisation (Aim 3), across a range of different HF disease states (Aim 4). Our feasibility study will enrol 40 patients at Royal North Shore Hospital, known for its high-volume HF care, over a 12-month period.

Conclusion

This research project is important as it aims to revolutionise the way we measure cardiovascular hemodynamics, without the need for invasive procedures. Success of this research would prompt a transition away from invasive methods to measure cardiovascular hemodynamics, and towards a contemporary approach using integrated, non-invasive pressure-flow assessment.