Artifact management in rotational imaging

1. A method for artifact management in an intravascular rotational imaging system, the method comprising the steps of:

acquiring rotational image data from a rotating probe of an intravascular rotational imaging system, wherein each frame of the image data comprises a seam line artifact and a guidewire shadow artifact;

transmitting the data to a computing device that comprises a processor;

processing on the computing device the data to produce an intravascular image wherein the seam line artifact overlaps with the guidewire artifact in the image; and

displaying the processed image.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the image data is acquired employing a helical scanning pattern over N revolutions, where N is greater than 1.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein processing comprises:

detecting at least one artifact in the acquired data of each revolution; and

segmenting the data acquired over N revolutions into N-1 data frames each bounded by at least one of the at least one artifacts.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the step of detecting further includes the steps of:

generating a ridge intensity level map from the acquired data;

averaging the ridge intensity level along a fixed data acquisition angle for all the fixed data acquisition angles in the acquired data; identifying features in the average ridge intensity level for the acquired data; and

associating at least one feature in the average ridge intensity level in the acquired data of each revolution with the at least one artifact.

5. The method of claim 3 , wherein the step of detecting further includes the steps of:

following a path through the acquired data along increasing radius for a fixed data acquisition angle;

measuring an intensity profile along the path; incrementing the fixed data acquisition angle to an adjacent fixed data acquisition angle; and

repeating the following and measuring and incrementing steps until the intensity profile along the path of the last fixed data acquisition angle is measured.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of detecting further includes the following steps after the incrementing step:

determining the fixed data acquisition angles for which the intensity profile includes a peak intensity above a predetermined peak intensity and a shadow intensity lower than a predetermined shadow intensity.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of detecting further includes the following steps after the incrementing step:

determining the fixed data acquisition angles for which an average of the intensity profile averaged along the path is below a predetermined average.

8. The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of detecting further includes the following steps after the incrementing step:

determining the fixed data acquisition angles for which a difference between a maximum intensity of the path and the standard deviation of the path excluding the maximum intensity is above a predetermined difference.

9. The method of claim 3 , wherein the step of segmenting further includes the step of normalizing the N-1 data frames into N-1 display frames each spanning 360 degrees.

10. The method of claim 9 , further including a step of rotationally registering each of the at least one of the at least one artifacts to a constant predetermined rotational registration angle for each of the N-1 display frames each spanning 360 degrees.