Patent ID: 8050739

Claim:
A method of determining a position of a catheter in relation to a region of interest of a patient during an interventional procedure, the method comprising the acts of: placing catheter tips, each tip of the catheter tips corresponding to one of a plurality of reference catheters, at a known position within the body of the patient; identifying positions of a respective position of each of the plurality of reference catheter tips in a pre-interventional data volume obtained from previous images of the region of interest of the patient prior to the interventional procedure; segmenting the plurality of reference catheter tips in the pre-interventional data volume to form segmented tips; assigning coordinates to each position of the segmented tips in an x-ray image obtained during the interventional procedure; computing by a processor a geometric transformation that transforms the identified positions of each of the segmented tips in the pre-interventional data volume given as 3-D coordinates in a manner that a projection through the volume results in 2-D coordinates that correspond to a 2-D coordinates that match obtained positions obtained from the x-ray image obtained during the interventional procedure; and displaying one of a fused or overlaid image of the pre-interventional data volume and the x-ray image to verify the location of the catheter in relation to a morphology of the patient.