Patent ID: 8259898

Claim:
A method for predicting specific cycle phases of a beating heart in a patient within a scope of a CT examination, wherein signal profiles of the heart are continuously recorded during the examination over a multiplicity of cardiac cycles, the method comprising: determining, by a processor, times of successive cycle positions with the same characteristics, the determining based on the signal profiles and the characteristic signal profiles contained therein; determining successive cycle lengths of the cardiac cycles based on the determined times; seeking, progressively concurrently with a present time, patterns in successive cycle lengths over a number of past and successive cardiac cycles; determining a current or future cycle length by recording a number of cardiac cycles in the form of state vectors and transferring the vectors into a state space, with each state vector being assigned the value of the subsequent cycle length, forming a weighted average over the subsequently measured cycle lengths, and predicting the value of a future cycle based on weightings, the weightings being inversely proportional to the distance between the state vectors recorded for the cycle length and the currently considered state vector for which the prediction is made.