Angiographic examination for a vascular system in a body region of interest of a patient

An angiographic examination method for generating at least one 2D projection image of a vascular system in a body region of interest of a patient by an angiography system, the method comprising:

• acquiring a volume dataset of the body region of interest containing the vascular system;
• reconstructing a 3D volume from the volume dataset containing the vascular system;
• forward-projecting to generate a virtual vessel projection;
• deriving a binary vessel mask from the virtual vessel projection;
• acquiring at least one current 2D projection image;
• combining the binary vessel mask with the at least one current 2D projection image to form a current mask;
• thresholding the current mask to form a current binary mask;
• back-projecting the current binary mask into the 3D volume to form a mask volume;
• threshold value segmenting the mask volume to generate a final virtual vessel volume;
• and
• subtracting a projection of the vessel volume from the current 2D projection images to generate a selective, overlay-free visualization of the body region of interest by selectable parameters.