Patent ID: 7806829

Claim:
A system for navigating an ultrasound catheter to image a beating heart, comprising: a) a catheter system carrying sensor electrodes and an ultrasonic transducer; b) an ultrasound system operatively coupled to said transducer to generate a sound wave and to sense an echo wave to yield and capture ultrasound data for a first frame of the interior surface of a heart; c) a navigation system operatively coupled to said electrodes for determining the location, in the context of a larger portion of the heart than is captured in the first frame, of the first frame; and d) an imaging system for simultaneously displaying an ultrasound image of the first frame and a three-dimensional context map of an interior heart geometry and simultaneously highlighting a first surface on the context map corresponding to the first frame and a second surface on the context map corresponding to a second frame of the interior surface of the heart for which ultrasound data was previously captured by the ultrasound system.