Patent ID: 7970191

Claim:
A method for downsampling fluoroscopic images and enhancing guidewire visibility during coronary angioplasty, said method comprising the steps of: providing a first digitized image comprising an array of intensities corresponding to a 2-dimensional grid of pixels; filtering said image with one or more steerable filters of different angular orientations; assigning a weight W and orientation O for each pixel based on a filter response for each pixel, wherein each pixel weight is assigned to a function of a maximum filter response magnitude and each pixel orientation is calculated from the angle producing a maximum filter response if said magnitude is greater than zero, wherein guidewire pixels have a higher weight than non-guidewire pixels; and downsampling orientation and weights to calculate a second image of half the resolution of said first digitized image, wherein said downsampling accounts for the orientation and higher weight assigned to said guidewire pixels.