1. A method for identifying regions of interest in a blood vessel, the method comprising the steps of: providing intravascular image data of the blood vessel; applying a plurality of different edge detection filters to the intravascular image data to generate a filter response for each edge detection filter; identifying in each edge detection filter response any response maxima, a local response maxima representing detected edges; combining the response maxima for each edge detection filter response while maintaining the spatial relationship of the response maxima, to thereby create edge filtered intravascular data; analyzing the edge filtered intravascular data to identify a region of interest, the region of interest defined as a local cluster of response maxima; and identifying the region of interest as a calcified region if the region of interest includes at least one vertical edge response maxima, wherein the plurality of different edge detection filters includes a horizontal edge detection filter and a vertical edge detection filter wherein the vertical edge detection filter comprises a left edge detection filter and a right edge detection filter.