Patent Document ID: 7991453
Application ID: 10534475
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A computer executable image processing method for displaying in a medical viewing system a sequence of medical images that represents moving and/or positioning a guide-wire in a blood vessel, the method comprising: acquiring a sequence of noisy images of the blood vessel and the guide-wire as the guide-wire moves in the blood vessel; processing the sequence of noisy images in real time, the processing comprising: detecting automatically the guide-wire tip; identifying a skeleton of the guide-wire tip including a series of pixels along a centerline of the tip; determining field of motion vectors based on said skeleton; registering automatically the guide-wire tip with respect to a prior reference image of the sequence of noisy images based on the field of motion vectors; integrating temporally by averaging pixel intensity over a plurality of the noisy images of the sequence of noisy images that are registered to the reference image, thereby enhancing the blood vessel and blurring background; and displaying the processed sequence.