Automatically determining 3D catheter location and orientation using 2D fluoroscopy only

A method for automatically determining the 3D position and orientation of a radio-opaque medical object in a living body using single-plane fluoroscopy comprising:

• capturing a stream of digitized 2D images from a single-plane fluoroscope;
• detecting an image of the medical object in a subset of the digital 2D images;
• applying to the digital 2D images calculations which preserve original pixel intensity values and permit statistical calculations thereon, the calculations comprising:
• multiple sequential determinations of a midline of the medical object image;
• a plurality of unfiltered raw-data cross-sectional intensity profiles perpendicular to each sequentially-determined midline;
• removal of outlier profiles from each plurality of profiles;
• and
• statistically combining each plurality of profiles with outliers removed to estimate image dimensions, thereby providing a final estimation of image dimensions to measure the medical-object image;
• applying conical projection and radial elongation corrections to the medical-object image measurements;
• and
• calculating the 3D position and orientation of the medical object from the corrected 2D image measurements.