Spatio-temporal X-ray fluoroscopy filtering using object detection

The authors describe an image processing technique to enhance X-ray fluoroscopy image sequences by reducing noise while minimizing motion blur. The method consists of object detection, followed by spatial and recursive temporal filtering. In many fluoroscopy applications, much of the motion occurs in isolated long thin objects (catheters, guide wires, etc.). The authors demonstrate that such structures can be detected and roughly segmented. Based upon the segmentation output they adjust spatial and temporal filtering parameters, such as to reduce noise without blurring the objects. As compared to conventional motion-detection. Filtering, this object-detection filtering method incorporates additional a priori knowledge of the image content. The authors demonstrate the segmentation and enhancement method on X-ray fluoroscopy sequences