The work presents a novel method for the detection of mutual
phase synchronization in non-stationary time series. We show how the
application of a cluster algorithmthat considers spatio-temporal struc-
tures of data follows from the general condition of phase-synchronized
data. In view of the topology of phasic data, we re-formulate the
K-Means cluster algorithm on a flat torus and apply a segmentation
index derived in an earlier work (Physica D 177,203-232(2003)). This index is extended by means of averaging in order to reflect phase syn-
chronization in ensembles of multivariate time series. The method is
illustrated using simulated multivariate phase dynamics and arrays of
chaotic systems, in which temporal segments of phase-synchronized
states are registered. A comparison with results from an existing bi-
variate synchronization index reveals major advantages of our method.