A research, which will be launched in Alberta, is looking for 500 Calgarians and 500 Edmontonians who suffer from cardiac trouble, to participate as subjects. The research study will focus on devising ways to achieve more accuracy in diagnosis and better treatment of heart failure.

Dr. Todd Anderson, who will be co-leading the multi-million dollar study, named Alberta Heart, for an estimated period of the five years, said, "Cardiologists are fairly confident handling systolic heart failure, a problem with pumping, however, there are still question marks surrounding diastolic heart failure, which is caused by the heart failing to relax".

Anderson, at the Stephenson Cardiovascular MR Centre in the Foothills hospital, said, "We don't really know what effective treatments are and how to prevent it".

"We thought we had a population in Alberta that was very important, very prevalent that we could tap into", he said.

Different sources have pooled in to fund for the research, one of them is a $17.5 Million, 5 year commitment from Alberta Health and Wellness.

It is estimated that around 80,000 Albertans currently suffer from heart failure, and about half of them are diastolic.