A system and method for tree structure based two-dimensional to three-dimensional registration are provided for receiving three-dimensional (3D) data indicative of vessels, segmenting the 3D data with a vessel tree, simulating two-dimensional (2D) data responsive to the segmented 3D data to form a simulated 2D image, receiving 2D data indicative of vessels, segmenting the received 2D data with a vessel tree, finding a distance transform of the segmented 2D data to form a 2D distance map image, considering a set of poses as state vectors with the corresponding probability computed using the similarity measure computation, re-sampling the pose vector to find a set of most probable poses and considering them as hypothesized poses, recomputing the projection and re-evaluating the probability of the hypothesized poses and updating the state vector until the optimal pose is found.