1. A method of detecting and tracking a centerline of a vessel in real-time, the method comprising: acquiring a 3D image volume; initializing the centerline; initializing a Kalman filter; predicting a next center point using the Kalman filter; checking validity of the prediction; updating the centerline based on the predicted next center point; performing template matching for estimating measurement error; updating the Kalman filter based on the template matching; and repeating the steps of predicting, checking, updating performing and updating for a predetermined number of times.