Patent ID: 8050482

Claim:
A method for online optimization of guidewire visibility in fluoroscopic images, comprising the steps of: providing an digitized image acquired from a fluoroscopic imaging system, said image comprising an array of intensities corresponding to a 2-dimensional grid of pixels; detecting a guidewire in said fluoroscopic image; enhancing the visibility of the guidewire in said fluoroscopic image; calculating a visibility measure of said guidewire in said fluoroscopic image; and readjusting acquisition parameters of said fluoroscopic imaging system wherein said guidewire visibility is improved, wherein enhancing guidewire visibility comprises constructing a mask image I M wherein pixels that have high filter response and are at most one pixel from said guidewire are also given value 1 and value 0 elsewhere, blurring said mask I M over every 3×3 pixel neighborhood, and multiplying the blurred mask by 0.1×(max(I)−min(I)) and subtracting the result from said fluoroscopic image.