1. A method of detecting intraventricular dyssynchrony for a ventricle of a beating heart, the method including: a) receiving initialization information from an observer viewing a first source image of a sequence of source images of a ventricle of a beating heart over at least one complete cardiac cycle to define a single vector constructed by concatenating Fourier shape descriptors extracted from a plurality of points associated with muscle boundaries of the ventricle over time; b) extracting muscle boundaries for each source image of the sequence of source images to define a corresponding spatio-temporal characterization of a complete source image sequence with contour shapes corresponding to the muscle boundaries using a Fourier descriptor model; and c) deforming the single vector of Fourier shape descriptors representing each contour shape in the complete source image sequence based at least in part on image forces, external forces, and internal forces to track movement of the muscle boundaries for the ventricle over time in the complete source image sequence.