Patent ID: 8538508

Claim:
A method for acquiring a plurality of slice images of a vessel, comprising the steps of: in an optical coherence tomography procedure, executing a pullback of an optical probe through a vessel of a subject while successively acquiring a plurality of optically-based cross-sectional slice images of the vessel with said optical probe; combining slice images, from among said plurality of slice images, into a 2D scene showing a longitudinal section of the vessel, each slice image in said 2D scene being comprised of data and each having an image center; subjecting each slice image in said 2D scene to a first data transformation to shift a midpoint of the vessel in each slice image in the 2D scene to coincide with the image center of each slice image; after said first data transformation, subjecting each slice image in the 2D scene to a second data transformation to obtain a twice-transformed 2D image of said longitudinal section vessel in a visually displayable form; and displaying said twice-transformed 2D images to form a display of said 2D scene in which the image center of each displayed twice-transformed image coincides with said midpoint of said vessel.