a method for recognizing heart diseases in a cardiac echo video of a heart with an unknown disease using a spatio - temporal disease model derived from a training echo video , comprising the steps of : generating a plurality of training models for heart diseases , wherein the cardiac echo videos are each derived from a known viewpoint and the disease of the heart is known ; analyzing the video of the heart with the unknown disease by fitting a model of shape and motion for each frame and combining the results across the frames ; and , reporting the disease using a classification method for choosing among the diseases of interest .