Patent ID: 7853061

Claim:
A system to track movement of an object travelling through an imaged subject, comprising: a fluoroscopic imaging system operable to acquire a fluoroscopic image of the object within a region of interest of the imaged subject; an imaging system operable to create a three-dimensional model of the region of interest of the imaged subject; and a controller comprising a memory operable to store a plurality of computer-readable program instructions for execution by a processor, the plurality of program instructions representative of the steps of: a) calculating a probability that an acquired image data is of the object, the calculating step performed per pixel in the fluoroscopic image, b) calculating a value of a blending coefficient per pixel of the fluoroscopic image dependent on the probability calculated in step (a), and c) creating an output image comprising at least a portion of the fluoroscopic image and at least a portion of the three-dimensional model, the step of creating including blending the at least portion of the fluoroscopic image and the at least portion of the three-dimensional model according to the blending coefficient of step (b).