A control processor (30) causes the drives (22, 24, 26) of a mechanical arm scanner to move an x-ray source (12) and a detector along an elliptical trajectory (50). The trajectory can be customized (38) to deviate from a true mathematical ellipse or to be only an arc segment. As the x-ray source and detector move along the trajectory, a large multiplicity of projection images are generated, at least when a contrast agent is present in the region-of-interest. A selectable limited subset of the generated projection images are selected for display in order to make an angiographic diagnosis.