Patent ID: 7467007

Claim:
A method for providing real-time image guidance in an image-guided medical procedure, the method comprising: (a) constructing, in a pre-operative stage of said procedure, a fused image comprising a single image of a computer tomography (CT) generated anatomical 4D data set of a patient's region of operative interest with a static fluoroscopic image of said patient's region of operative interest; (b) acquiring, in an operative stage of said procedure, a live fluoroscopic image of said patient's region of operative interest; (c) acquiring, in said operative stage, an operative respiratory gating signal of the patient, substantially coincident with said step (b); and (d) triggering, in said operative stage, the fused image, obtained at said step (a), with the live fluoroscopic image, obtained at said step (b) by the real-time respiratory gating signal, obtained at said step (c) to generate a real-time fused, and triggered image of said patient's region of operative interest; wherein the fused and triggered image provides real-time image guidance during said image-guided medical procedure by displaying a medical device in real time to ensure a safer and more efficient intervention wherein the constructing step (a) further comprises acquiring a pre-operative respiratory gating signal of the patient's respiratory movement, at substantially a point in time when the monitored respiratory signal reaches a preset phase of respiration; acquiring an anatomical 3D data set of a patient's region of operative interest; constructing an anatomical 4D data set from the acquired anatomical 3D data set; acquiring a static fluoroscopic image of said patient's region of operative interest; selecting a single frame from the anatomical 4D data set as an optimal image: and statically fusing the selected single frame from the anatomical 4D data set with the acquired static fluoroscopic image.