Patent ID: 7775978

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for determining cyclical information from ultrasound data, the storage medium comprising instructions for: obtaining a sequence of frames of data each representing data of a same two or three dimensional region acquired at a different time; transforming the data sequence by projection along different spatial dimensions, the transformation reducing an amount of data; and determining cycle timing information as a function of the transformed data sequence; wherein determining comprises: identifying from the transformed data sequence a location in the region having with a relatively large variance, wherein the location is identified by identifying a line extending in a temporal dimension of the sequence of frames, the line being an intersection of first and second planes extending along different spatial dimensions of the region and extending along the temporal dimension, the different spatial dimensions comprising dimensions used for the transforming, and the first and the second planes being identified by determining a first and a second spatial lines of said sequence projected along a first and a second of said different spatial dimensions, respectively, said first and second lines having a maximum variance in their respective projected sequences; and calculating cycle timing information from data representing the location.