System and Method for Coronary Digital Subtraction Angiography

An apparatus for extracting coronary vessels from a contrast image, comprising:

• means for calculating a motion field between each of a plurality of mask images and a background region of the contrast image and calculating covariances of motion vectors of each motion field;
• means for generating a plurality of background layer predictions by generating a background layer prediction from each of the plurality of mask images based on the motion field and the covariances of the motion field from each of the plurality of mask images;
• means for combining the plurality of background layer predictions using statistical fusion to generate a final estimated background layer;
• and
• means for extracting a coronary vessel layer from the contrast image by subtracting the final estimated background layer from the contrast image.

A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with computer executable instructions for extracting coronary vessels from a contrast image, the computer executable instructions defining steps comprising:

• calculating a motion field between each of a plurality of mask images and a background region of the contrast image and calculating covariances of motion vectors of each motion field;
• generating a plurality of background layer predictions by generating a background layer prediction from each of the plurality of mask images based on the motion field and the covariances of the motion field from each of the plurality of mask images;
• combining the plurality of background layer predictions using statistical fusion to generate a final estimated background layer;
• and
• extracting a coronary vessel layer from the contrast image by subtracting the final estimated background layer from the contrast image.