Vascular orientation marker for determining the orientation of a blood vessel

Abstract

A catheter having one or more radio-opaque bands near the distal end is designed to be inserted into the renal artery so that the distal end of the catheter is adjacent to the origin of the renal artery. An X-ray image of the bands is used to position the X-ray head relative to the aorta and renal artery so that a useful, unobstructed radiological image perpendicular to the axis of the renal artery at its origin is obtained. This facilitates the positioning of a stent in the renal artery so that the stent encompasses the origin and extends no more than about three millimeters into the aorta. Two radio-opaque bands placed close to one another define a narrow radio-translucent band such that when the X-ray head is rotated to a position where parallax is reduced and the radio-translucent band can be imaged, the renal artery can be appropriately imaged without being obscured by the aorta.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.