A method for performing deformable non-rigid registration of 2D and 3D images of a vascular structure for assistance in surgical intervention includes acquiring 3D image data. An abdominal aorta is segmented from the 3D image data using graph-cut based segmentation to produce a segmentation mask. Centerlines are generated from the segmentation mask using a sequential topological thinning process. 3D graphs are generated from the centerlines. 2D image data is acquired. The 2D image data is segmented to produce a distance map. An energy function is defined based on the 3D graphs and the distance map. The energy function is minimized to perform non-rigid registration between the 3D image data and the 2D image data. The registration may be optimized.