DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s response to the restriction requirement without traverse on 12/1/2025 is acknowledged.
Claims 1-5 remain pending in the current application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 1 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites the limitation ‘a first section of the first sections is electrically connected’ and then later the limitation ‘a magnetic field generated by the first section’. It is unclear if the second recitation of ‘first section’ refers to the initial claimed first section or if it refers to the aforementioned first section of the first sections. For the purposes of this office action any component that generates a magnetic field will be considered analogous to the limitation in question.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Navarro de Lara (US 20150099963 A1) in view of Reykowski (Non-Patent Literature).
Regarding claim 1, Navarro de Lara teaches local coil for percutaneous magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) guided minimally invasive intervention ([0014] According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a system for combined transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, comprising: [0015] a TMS coil for stimulating a stimulation area; [0016] a coil for magnetic resonance imaging, an MR coil, for MR imaging of the stimulation area and an area surrounding the stimulation area; [0017] the TMS coil and the MR coil being spatially arranged to allow said stimulating to be performed through the MR coil)
a central antenna coil ([0091] central basic element 17; see fig. 4)
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having an opening for passing through an instrument ([0091] The basic elements 11-17 are made from insulated copper wire of 1.5 mm in diameter; seeing as the central element is a hollow circle made of copper wire, an instrument could very easily pass through, this configuration is evident in fig. 5)
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and a plurality of first peripheral antenna coils, wherein the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils surround the central antenna coil on an outer circumference of the central antenna coil ([0090] Six basic elements 11-16 are arranged into a substantially hexagonal structure, i.e. the structure, in which segments of a straight line, connecting centers of said basic elements, create a figure resembling a hexagon. The seventh basic element 17 is placed substantially in the middle of the hexagonal structure)
wherein the local coil is configured to be arranged flat on a body surface of a patient ([0084] An MR coil 4 is placed between the head (scalp) 5 of a patient and the TMS coil 6, in a "sandwich" arrangement, and the TMS coil 6 provides stimulation to the stimulation area 6a of neurological interest (further referred to as stimulation area 6a) in the brain cortex through the MR coil 4)
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wherein in order to realize an inductive decoupling from the plurality of first peripheral coils, the central antenna coil has a non-empty intersection of a projection of each antenna coil of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils onto the central antenna coil along a surface normal of the central antenna coil, wherein the central antenna coil has first sections on the outer circumference alternating along a periphery, each of which overlaps with an antenna coil of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils, and second sections that do not overlap with an antenna coil of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils ([0091] Each basic element 11-16 partially overlaps with the central basic element 17 and partially overlaps (or is overlapped by) two of its neighbors. The basic elements 11-17 are made from insulated copper wire of 1.5 mm in diameter. Mechanical contacts between overlapping parts of the basic elements have been avoided by bending the top wires at the points of contact 8 (for clarity, only one point of contact 8 is provided with the reference numeral))
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and wherein a first section of the first sections is electrically connected to the central antenna coil such that when a current flows through the central antenna coil, a magnetic field generated by the first section has an opposite polarity to a magnetic field generated by an interior space of the central antenna coil, and the first section has an overlap with two adjacent antenna coils of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils ([0108] In order to minimize high coupling between non-adjacent basic elements 11-17, preamplifier decoupling is implemented for each basic element. For this purpose, a second order matching network, comprising capacitor C2 (33), capacitor C3 (34), inductor L.sub.pd (30), and capacitor C4 (36), proposed for example by Reykowski, has been designed for each basic element, see Reykowski, A., Wright, S. M., & Porter, J. R., 1995, "Design of matching networks for low noise preamplifiers", Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 33, 848-852; [0109] The proposed structure A-2 of second order matching network of Reykowski has been selected to minimize possible coupling between the inductor 30 used to achieve preamplifier decoupling and the inductor 31 used to detune the MR coil 4 during generation of the MR transmit pulses; overlap can be seen in the previously cited fig. 4)
Furthermore, the Reykowski paper referenced in the Navarro de Lara disclosure teaches [abst] networks that minimize inductive coupling between the antennas within an array while simultaneously insuring minimum noise contributions from preamplifiers…reduce antenna currents by using lossless impedance transformations to create a high impedance at the coil terminals while simultaneously maintaining a low noise figure for the amplifier.
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One of ordinary skill in the art would realize that the configuration provided in the Reykowski paper that is also utilized in the Navarro de Lara reference would generate a magnetic field at the high impedance coil terminal and a magnetic field with opposite polarity in the interior of the circuit in order to achieve inductive decoupling while simultaneously minimizing the signal to noise ratio.
Regarding claim 2, Navarro de Lara teaches a plurality of second peripheral antenna coils, wherein the plurality of second peripheral antenna coils surround the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils and the central antenna coil on the outer circumference of the central antenna coil ([0091] Each basic element 11-16 partially overlaps with the central basic element 17 and partially overlaps (or is overlapped by) two of its neighbors. The basic elements 11-17 are made from insulated copper wire of 1.5 mm in diameter. Mechanical contacts between overlapping parts of the basic elements have been avoided by bending the top wires at the points of contact 8 (for clarity, only one point of contact 8 is provided with the reference numeral))
Regarding claim 3, Navarro de Lara teaches wherein one or more peripheral antenna coils of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils have an opening for passing through an instrument ([0127] For the other six basic elements 11-16, there is even more free space available between the MR coil 4 and the TMS coil 6, and therefore the planar PCBs 18a-18f of the embodiments of the invention, or even standard PCBs of the prior art, can fit in either outside or inside of their corresponding basic elements 11-16, as shown on FIGS. 4, 5 and 10, respectively)
Regarding claim 4, Navarro de Lara teaches wherein in order to realize an inductive decoupling from an adjacent peripheral antenna coil of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils, a peripheral antenna coil of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils has a non-empty intersection of a projection of the peripheral antenna coil onto the adjacent peripheral antenna coil along a surface normal of the peripheral antenna coil ([0117] During operation, the TMS coil 6 creates a strong magnetic field of about 2 T in its immediate vicinity. This magnetic field rapidly decays away from the TMS coil 6, so that even in the center of the basic element 17, where it is the strongest, a typical operational reach of the TMS coil 6 (i.e. a distance from the TMS coil 6 to the stimulation area 6a) is about 2-4 cm in depth; overlap can be observed in fig. 4)
Regarding claim 5, Navarro de Lara teaches a plurality of electronics units that are in signal connection with the central antenna coil, the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils, or the central antenna coil and the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils, wherein one electronics unit of the plurality of electronics units that is in signal connection with a peripheral antenna coil of the plurality of first peripheral antenna coils is arranged directly outside on a side of the peripheral antenna coil facing away from the central antenna coil ([0099] As mentioned above, the basic elements 11-17 are provided with respective assemblies of electronic components required for its operation, each comprising a printed circuit board (PCB) 18a-18g, and a cable 32 connecting each PCB to a respective preamplifier 24 (shown in FIG. 6) housed in a separate interface box 22 containing the preamplifiers for all basic elements. PCBs for basic elements 11-17 have been labeled 18a-18g respectively as shown in FIG. 4; [0100] Each PCB 18a-18g contains electronic components for creating optimal conditions for acquiring the MR signal, and for detuning the entire MR coil 4 during the generation of MR transmit pulses).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Ryu (US 20140197833 A1) teaches [0077] For example, as illustrated in FIG. 6, the surface RF coil device 130 may be a 7-channel parallel transmission array with a central RF coil element 131 and 6 peripheral RF coil elements 132 surrounding the central RF coil element 131. However, RF coil elements may be added to or removed from the surface RF coil device 130 so that the surface RF coil device 130 may be driven with 5 channels, 11 channels, or any other number of channels.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GABRIEL VICTOR POPESCU whose telephone number is (571)272-7065. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8AM-5PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Pascal Bui-Pho can be reached at (571) 272-2714. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/GABRIEL VICTOR POPESCU/Examiner, Art Unit 3798
/PASCAL M BUI PHO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3798