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.