To produce a black body angiographic image representation of a subject (42), an imaging scanner (10) acquires imaging data that includes black blood vascular contrast. A reconstruction processor (38) reconstructs a gray scale image representation (100) from the imaging data. A post-acquisition processor (46) transforms (130) the image representation (100) into a pre-processed image representation (132). The processor (46) assigns (134) each image element into one of a plurality of classes including a black class corresponding to imaged vascular structures, bone, and air, and a gray class corresponding to other non-vascular tissues. The processor (46) averages (320) intensities of the image elements of the gray class to obtain a mean gray intensity value (322), and replaces (328) the values of image elements comprising non-vascular structures of the black class with the mean gray intensity value.