Patent ID: 8271070

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for real time monitoring of a myocardium during a cardiovascular procedure, the method implemented by the computer comprising the steps of: acquiring real time images of a left ventricle (LV) myocardium for a plurality of time steps and segmenting in real time the myocardium in each said image to estimate the endocardial and epicardial contours of the LV myocardium; calculating a wall thickness of the myocardium in real-time from the estimated endocardial and epicardial contours for each said segmented image; using a first state space model with a first regressive filter to predict the myocardium wall thickness for each acquired real time image over the plurality of time steps based on the previously acquired real time images and an estimated cardiac beating frequency, wherein the first state space model of the myocardium wall thickness is S t = c 0 + ∑ j = 1 , 2 ⁢ ( c j ⁢ cos ⁡ ( j ⁢ ⁢ wt + σ j ) ) , wherein c 0 and c 1 are constants w=2πf wherein f is the estimated cardiac beating frequency, and σ j is a phase; and using the predicted myocardium wall thickness with a second state space model with a second regressive filter to predict a cardiac beating frequency for each acquired real time image over the plurality of time steps based on the previously acquired real time images, wherein at each subsequent time step the estimated cardiac beating frequency is updated with the predicted cardiac beating frequency in the first state space model.