Abstract: A method for determining the 3D location of a catheter distal end portion in a patient's body, the distal end portion including an electrode, the method comprising: (a) placing first and second body-surface patches on the patient in positions such that body region of interest is therebetween; (b) driving an alternating current between the patches; (c) measuring the voltage at the electrode and substantially contemporaneously capturing a 2D fluoroscopic image of the region of interest; and (d) determining the 3D location of the catheter distal end portion from the image and the measured voltage. A primary application of this method is 3D navigation during cardiac interventional procedures.

Abstract: A system and method is provided for efficiently accomplishing texture transformation from an initial state to a final state. Only an initial and a final texture, and the number of desired intermediate textures are transmitted to a local computer system from a remote computer system. A control channel bears information of the desired number of intermediate textures and is used for controlling which pixels are to be changed and how fast they are changed. In one example, a portion of the initial texture is changed to its final texture in each intermediate texture. In another example, the colors of the initial texture change gradually into the final texture by changing the values of the color components of each pixel in each intermediate texture by a predetermined step value.