A method for model based motion tracking of a catheter during an ablation procedure includes receiving a training series of biplanar fluoroscopic images of a catheter acquired under conditions that will be present during an ablation procedure, segmenting and processing the series of biplanar images to produce a distance transform image for each biplanar image at each acquisition time, minimizing, for each pair of biplanar images at each acquisition time, a cost function of the distance transform image for each pair of biplanar images to yield a translation parameter that provides a best fit for a model of the catheter to each pair of biplanar images at each acquisition time, and calculating an updated catheter model for each acquisition time from said translation parameter.