1. A method for identifying regions of calcified plaque in an interior vessel within the body of a patient, the method comprising the procedures of: obtaining a sequence of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) images of an interior vessel; applying a morphological closing operation to every image in said sequence of IVUS images; assigning tentative calcium pixels based on pixel intensity characteristics, resulting in a binary image of true and false pixels; applying a morphological dilation operation to said resulting binary image; and determining boundary of calcified plaque regions.