Patent ID: 7725165

Claim:
A method for visualizing anatomical structures, the method comprising the steps of: (1) processing pre-acquired scanned patient-specific data so as to produce a virtual 3D model of anatomical structures of a patient, wherein processing is effected so that separate views of the patient's bone and blood flow structures can be generated; (2) positioning a C-arm fluoroscope with standard Anterior-Posterior (AP) orientation relative to the patient; (3) conducting fluoroscopic imaging so as to provide real-time images of the patient's bone structure; (4) overlaying, on top of the fluoroscopic images, virtual images from the virtual 3D model, with those images representing only the patient's bone structure; (5) placing the virtual images of the patient's bone structure generated from the virtual 3D model in registration with the fluoroscope images of the patient's bone structure, whereby a coordinate system of the virtual 3D model is correlated to a coordinate system of the fluoroscope; (6) imaging the patient's bone structure using fluoroscopy so as to create a mask image of the patient's bone structure; (7) turning off the virtual images of the virtual bone structure and turning on the virtual images of the blood flow structure, so as to show the blood flow structure from the virtual 3D model overlaid on top of the fluoroscopic images in a semi-transparent mode, thereby providing a composite view simultaneously showing the patient's blood flow structure from the virtual 3D model and the patient's bone structure from the fluoroscopic images; (8) using the mask image to subtract out the bone structure from the composite view, whereby to produce the virtual road map which will be used by the surgeon; and (9) visualizing the virtual road map on a display monitor.