Patent ID: 7877132
Filing Date: 2011-01-25
Classification: A61B,G06T

Abstract:
1. A method of medical imaging comprising: at least one of moving and positioning a tool in a body organ using a tool support; acquiring a sequence of 2D fluoroscopic images of said tool with an image detector; during the acquiring step, moving said image detector relative to said tool such that the fluoroscopic images of the sequence are acquired at least one of from different directions and with different levels of zoom; automatically extracting markers attached to said tool support and yielding marker location information; at least one of rotating, translating, and scaling the fluoroscopic images of the sequence to bring the markers into registration in the fluoroscopic images of the sequence, background portions of the registered images being different in different images due to being acquired at least one of from different directions and with different levels of zoom; deriving tool location information from said marker location information in the registered images of the sequence; and integrating the registered images of said sequence to coherently sum portions of the image including the tool to improve the visibility of said tool and sum the background portions of the images to blur the background such that the visibility of the tool is enhanced relative to the background.