Patent Document ID: 9480403
Application ID: 14107895
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of medical imaging comprising: acquiring image data of a periodically moving structure over more than a single physiological cycle, the image data comprising a plurality of images representing the structure at different phases of a physiological cycle; associating phase information from the physiological cycle with the image data; identifying a base image sequence from the image data based on the phase information, the base image sequence corresponding to an integral number of physiological cycles; identifying a plurality of non-base images in the image data, where the plurality of non-base images were acquired either before or after the base image sequence during the process of said acquiring the image data of the periodically moving structure; generating a blended image sequence, the blended image sequence comprising a start, an end, a set of blended images, an unblended portion, and a seam indicating a location in the blended image sequence where the blended image sequence transitions from the end to the start when the blended image sequence is displayed as a blended cine loop, where the set of blended images is generated by blending each of the plurality of non-base images with a corresponding one of the base images according to one of a plurality of weighting functions, where the weighting function used to control the blending is selected based on a distance of the blended image from the seam, where the set of blended images reduces the appearance of the seam when the blended image sequence is displayed as the blended cine loop; and displaying the blended image sequence as the blended cine loop on a display device.