New EU project to strengthen heart safety in cancer patients
A major European research project with a budget of more than €50 million aims to improve the detection and prevention of heart damage in cancer patients. Researchers from Health are among the partners in the project.
More people are surviving cancer than ever before. But for many patients, treatment such as radiotherapy of women with breast cancer comes with a hidden cost: damage to the heart that may only appear months or years later. The EU project COMPASS aims to enable earlier detection and prevention of these complications.
The project is funded by the EU Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) and brings together more than 60 partners from 25 countries. COMPASS combines advanced imaging, biomarkers and artificial intelligence to identify patients at risk before symptoms occur.
“We need to move from reacting to heart damage to preventing it. With new imaging technologies and AI-based tools, we can identify risk much earlier and adapt treatment accordingly,” says Professor Christoffer Laustsen from the Department of Clinical Medicine.
Health contributes to the project with research in advanced MRI, which can detect early changes in the heart during and after cancer treatment.
The project was launched in March 2026 and will run for five years.
Contact
Professor Christoffer Laustsen
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine - MR Research Centre
Phone: +45 24 43 91 41
Email: cl@clin.au.dk