Patent Document ID: 8232992
Application ID: 12092436
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A medical diagnostic image processing system for displaying an image of a body volume of a living subject including blood vessels, the system comprising: a source of a series of two-dimensional projection images of the body volume generated as a catheter moves through the blood vessels; a processor configured to: receive three dimensional image data of said body volume, render a direct volume silhouette image from said three dimensional image data, said volume silhouette image being rendered with voxel values proportional to a translucency of voxels of said three dimensional image data, apply an edge enhancement filter to emphasize edges of the blood vessels in the volume silhouette image, register and sequentially combine each of the series of two dimensional projection images on the volume silhouette image to show the catheter moving through the edge enhanced blood vessels, vary levels of contrast and/or shading in the displayed volume silhouette image to adjust the translucency of the voxels; a display which displays the registered and combined resultant volume silhouette image combined with each of the series of two-dimensional projection images; and a user control by which a user selects and controls the level of contrast and/or shading in the volume silhouette image for display.