Patent ID: 8718349

Claim:
A medical imaging arrangement for accurate positioning for vessel intervention procedures, the arrangement comprising: an X-ray image acquisition device; a data processing unit; and a display device; the data processing unit being configured for acquiring via said X-ray image acquisition device: a plurality of X-ray images of a vessel region of interest with injected contrast agent; and at least one current fluoroscopy image of the vessel region of interest; and further configured for: identifying vessel information data within said plurality of X-ray images; detecting first calcification features of a vessel in the vessel region of interest in said plurality of X-ray images; generating vessel representation using the vessel information data and the detected calcification features; detecting second calcification features of the vessel in the vessel region of interest in the current fluoroscopy image, wherein the second calcification features are corresponding to the first calcification features; registering the vessel representation with said fluoroscopy image, the calcification features being used for the registration; generating a composite image by combining the vessel representation with said fluoroscopy image; displaying the composite image via said display device, said acquiring of the X-ray images comprising acquiring a sequence of images, said sequence comprising multiple images of a contrast phase and multiple images of a non-contrasted phase; tracking the images of the sequence until determining that the first calcification features have become visible in the non-contrasted phase; locating the calcification features with respect to the vessel information data corresponding to an acquired image in the contrast phase; recording spatial relationships linking contours discerned from said tracking; and applying the spatial relationships to the calcification features, in order to use said features in said registering.