Patent ID: 7215802

Claim:
A border-identification system comprising: a computing device adapted to be electrically connected to a data-gathering device and to acquire from said data-gathering device RF data backscattered from vascular tissue, said computing device comprising: a database for storing a plurality of parameters and a plurality of corresponding tissue types; a characterization application electrically connected to said database and adapted to: transform said RF data into the frequency domain; identify a plurality of parameters associated with said transformed RF data; and use said plurality of parameters and information stored in said database to identify at least two tissue types of said vascular tissue, wherein a portion of said transformed RF data corresponds to said at least two tissue types; a gradient-border application adapted to use said RF data to determine gradient information; a frequency-border application adapted to use at least said portion of said transformed RF data to determine spectral information; and an active-contour application adapted to use said gradient information and said spectral information to determine at least one border on an image of a vascular object comprising said vascular tissue.