 Conventional methods to reduce in radiation exposure, however, impact and often degrade diagnostic image quality. Catheterization procedures focus on a small portion of the anatomy forming the central region of the image with the periphery providing contextual information. Thus, decreasing the image quality in periphery can provide an overall exposure reduction to patients and interventionists without impacting on diagnosis. This can be achieved by introducing a pre-patient region-of-interest ROI attenuator that collimates the primary x-ray beam, reducing exposure to peripheral regions and decreasing integral radiation to the patient and scatter radiation to the interventionist. 