SCIENTISTS at Oxford University have developed a new way to detect heart damage caused by chemotherapy.

Currently, there is no non-invasive way to find out whether chemotherapy is affecting a person’s heart as symptoms, such as breathlessness, usually only appear when there has already been significant damage and heart failure is irreversible.

The new research found that, in rats, a type of imaging called hyperpolarised MRI can be used to see what is happening deep inside the heart’s cells.

If found to work in people, the high-tech scan would allow doctors to alter treatment before it was too late to save a patient's life.