A method for monitoring cardiac function of a patient during a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedure, including: acquiring an MR image sequence of the patient's heart during a cardiac phase； segmenting a left ventricle of the patient's heart in the MR image sequence, wherein the segmentation produces endocardial and epicardial contours； representing at least one of the contours in polar or radial coordinates and computing its Fourier transform, wherein the Fourier transform produces Fourier descriptors for the contour； putting a vector of the Fourier descriptors into a classifier, wherein the classifier determines whether the contour reflects normal wall motion in the cardiac phase or whether the contour reflects abnormal wall motion in the cardiac phase； and alerting a medical practitioner when abnormal wall motion is detected.
