This technology, however, can only reveal larger blockages or blood clots – which cause major cardiac events when they rupture.

Although this is common, a huge portion of heart attacks happen due to the rupturing of smaller plaques, not currently visible by invasive angiography, often leaving doctors unsure of the specifics of a heart attack, making treatment difficult.

Elderly patients often (up to 50% in some studies) undergo this invasive X-ray unnecessarily as they display symptoms of a heart attack.

More often than not though, this is down to a type 2 heart attack – an imbalance of oxygen supply to the heart – rendering the angiography pointless.

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The new clot-tracking technology from the Edinburgh researchers, however, can spot these tiny blood clots in the arteries (and elsewhere).

Their hope is that the new tech will help doctors distinguish between a type 1 and 2 heart attack more easily and improve the care for patients that have suffered cardiac events.

The research was funded by the BHF and presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress.

Dr Evangelos Tzolos, BHF clinical research fellow at the Edinburgh University, said: “Our technology can detect clots that aren’t visible with the naked eye or current heart scans, and has the power to determine how active or ‘risky’ they are and help us differentiate between different type of heart attacks.

“We now need to test this technology on more people before it can be used in the NHS.”