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 .
Status of Claims
Applicant’s Amendments filed on 07/16/2025 has been entered and made of record.
Currently pending Claim(s)
1–20
Independent Claim(s)
1, 12, 17
Amended Claim(s)
1–2, 4–7, 9–12, 14–20
Response to Arguments
This office action is responsive to Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks Made in an Amendment received on July 16, 2025.
In view of the new specifications amendments and applicant arguments, [Remarks] filed on July 16, 2025, the specification objection has been withdrawn.
In view of the new claim amendments and applicant arguments, [Remarks] filed on July 16, 2025, the claim objection has been withdrawn.
In view of the new claim amendments and applicant arguments, [Remarks] filed on July 16, 2025 with respect to 35 U.S.C. 112(b) claim rejection have been carefully considered and the claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) are withdrawn.
On the bottom of page 12 to page 15, applicant argues, in summary, the applied prior art of Tourapis et al. (US 2021/0256735 A1) does not teach or suggest the following limitations:
“apply, while in lossy mode, an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map, and to reduce a bitrate for transmission of the occupancy map, to generate an adaptively smoothed occupancy map.”
Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks with respect to independent claims 1, 12, and 17, have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply because the amendment is rejected by newly cited art Ryde et al. ("Extracting edge voxels from 3D volumetric maps to reduce map size and accelerate mapping alignment.") as explained in the body of the rejection below.
Furthermore, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, Tourapis teaches “to reduce a bitrate for transmission of the occupancy map, to generate an adaptively smoothed occupancy map.” Tourapis discloses rate control/allocation for the occupancy map and applying a smoothing filter to the occupancy map which can be done adaptively [para 0169, 0260].
Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks with respect to dependent claim 20, on the bottom of page 15 to the top of page 16, have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to any of the reference being used in the current rejection and the amendment is rejected by Joshi et al. (US 2020/0219288 A1) as explained in the body of the rejection below.
Regarding the other dependent claims, the applicant argues, on the bottom of page 16, in summary, the other dependent claims contain allowable subject matter and should be allowable due to their dependency from allowable independent claims. the Examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant’s line of reasoning. The Examiner has thoroughly reviewed the Applicant’s arguments but respectfully believes that the cited reference to reasonably and properly meet the claimed limitations which are explained in the body of the rejection below.
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.
Claims 1-2, 4-7, 11, and 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254 A1) (hereafter, “Oh”) in view of Tourapis et al. (US 2021/0256735 A1) (hereafter, “Tourapis”) and further in view of Ryde et al. (Ryde, Julian, and Jeffrey A. Delmerico. "Extracting edge voxels from 3D volumetric maps to reduce map size and accelerate mapping alignment." 2012 Ninth Conference on Computer and Robot Vision. IEEE, 2012) (hereafter, “Ryde”).
Regarding claim 1, Oh discloses an apparatus [Figure 1; a three-dimensional data communication system according to an embodiment may include a three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 and a three-dimensional data receiving apparatus 120, para 0032] comprising: at least one processor [Figure 1; the three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 according to an embodiment may include a processor 111, para 0033]; and at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable storage media, para 0106]: represented with at least one geometry patch of an atlas [Figure 4; the processor of the three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 may separate three-dimensional data into geometry information including position information and other attribute information such as a color and the like ... packing the generated patches (430), and generating, based on the packed patches, geometry 2D image information, color 2D image information, para 0035, 0057] and at least one texture patch of the atlas [Figure 4; the processor 111 may generate a texture image with respect to other attributes by a method similar to the method used to generate a geometry image, by using the reconstructed three-dimensional data and other attribute data, for example, color information. For example, like a texture image 201 illustrated in Fig. 2, the processor 111 may generate a texture image indicating color information of points ... packing the generated patches (430), and generating, based on the packed patches, geometry 2D image information, color 2D image information, para 0043, 0057]; create an occupancy map that indicates which pixels of the at least one geometry patch and the at least one texture patch are occupied having a valid value [Figure 4; a method of encoding three-dimensional data may include ... an occupancy map having occupancy information indicating the position of a meaningful point in the geometry 2D image information ... the processor 111 may generate a texture image with respect to other attributes by a method similar to the method used to generate a geometry image, by using the reconstructed three-dimensional data and other attribute data, for example, color information, para 0057, 0043]; wherein the occupancy map is configured to be used to reconstruct the mesh [the processor 121 may generate three-dimensional reconstruction data with points arranged in a three-dimensional space, based on the decompressed geometry image and the decompressed occupancy map, para 0050]; and at least one occupancy filter threshold [a three-dimensional data encoding apparatus may transmit the following parameters together when encoding and transmitting three-dimensional data. occupancy_map_filtering_threshold ... the occupancy_map_filtering_threshold may indicate a discriminant value used in 2D filtering, para 0084, 0087, 0088]; and encode the adaptively smoothed occupancy map [Figure 4 & 9; a bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream based on the geometry image, the texture image, the occupancy map, para 0067] and the at least one occupancy filter threshold into a bitstream [the bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream including the filtering performed on ... the downsampled occupancy map, and information about filtering performed on the occupancy map ... the occupancy_map_filtering_threshold may indicate a discriminant value used in 2D filtering, para 0067, 0088].
Oh fails to explicitly disclose receive as input a three-dimensional mesh; enter lossy mode; apply, while in lossy mode, an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map, and to reduce a bitrate for transmission of the occupancy map, to generate an adaptively smoothed occupancy map; store, while in lossy mode, the adaptively smoothed occupancy map.
However, Tourapis teaches receive as input a three-dimensional mesh [the encoder 200 receives uncompressed point cloud 202 and generates compressed point cloud information 204 ... in some embodiments, mesh-based codecs may be an alternative to the approach described above, para 0080, 0171]; enter lossy mode [variations in image frames due to lossy compression and decompression may be accounted for by an occupancy map compression module, such as occupancy map compression module 220, when determining an occupancy map for an image frame, para 0087]; apply, while in lossy mode, an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map [to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map] [a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels. In some embodiments, such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering ... may allow a rate control module to adapt and assign different, e.g. lower, quantization parameters (QPs), and in an essence a different amount of bits, to the blocks containing the occupancy map edges, para 0169], and to reduce a bitrate transmission of the occupancy map, to generate an adaptively smoothed occupancy map [rate control/allocation to leverage the occupancy map ... applying the smoothing filter may comprise: a. by exploiting the occupancy map, both the encoder and the decoder may be able to detect boundary points ... they may be fixed for all the points or chosen adaptively, para 0169, 0260]; store, while in lossy mode, the adaptively smoothed occupancy map [a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels ... such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering, para 0169].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh by incorporating the teachings of Tourapis with adaptive smoothing to better support the variability of the network, as recognized by Tourapis.
Neither Oh nor Tourapis appears to explicitly disclose [apply, while in lossy mode, an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map] to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map.
However, Ryde teaches [apply, while in lossy mode, an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map] to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map [we employ an approach based on eigenvalue analysis of the structure tensor, computed for occupied voxels in a 3D occupancy grid ... we compute the ratio of the middle to largest eigenvalues and threshold that, selecting as edges only those voxels with a ratio > 0.2 ... above this threshold, however, we retain not only the ideal edges and corners ... pg. 332, B. Edge Voxel Extraction, right column, third paragraph; pg. 333, Eigenvalue Classification, right column, fourth paragraph; pg. 334, Eigenvalue Classification, left column, first paragraph] to smooth the occupancy map [for each occupied voxel p, we consider a kxkxk neighborhood centered at p (a neighborhood of half-width h such that k=2h+1). For each voxel in that neighborhood, we use a 3D Gaussian weighing function ... the extraction of the edge voxels by filtering out the often numerous planar voxels dramatically reduces the map size and accelerates the alignment, pg. 333, Structure Tensor Derivation, left column, third paragraph; pg. 337, V. Conclusion, right column, second paragraph].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis by incorporating the teachings of Ryde for faster alignment by smoothing the occupancy map, as recognized by Ryde.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ryde with Oh and Tourapis to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
Regarding claim 2, which claim 1 is incorporated, Oh discloses wherein the at least one memory stores instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: generate several smoothing levels of the occupancy map using a multiscale filtering approach [Figure 7; two-time upsampling (or oversampling) and 2D filtering of an occupancy map, used in a method of encoding three-dimensional data ... According to an occupancy precision value, the two-time upsampling and the 2D filtering illustrated in FIG. 7 may be repeated, para 0077, 0078].
Regarding claim 4, which claim 2 is incorporated, Oh discloses wherein the at least one memory stores instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that , when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: determine, for a pixel of the occupancy map, one of the smoothing levels that allows reconstruction of an original value of the occupancy map [in performing 2D filtering on an upsampled occupancy map, an area having a value of 0 of the upsampled occupancy map may maintain the value of 0, regardless of a filtering result, para 0081]; determine to filter the pixel, in response to determining one of the smoothing levels that allows reconstruction of the original value of the occupancy map [in the case when an output value of filtering is a threshold or less, the output value may be changed to 0 when an original value is 1, para 0081]; and determine to not filter the pixel, in response to not being able to determine one of the smoothing levels that allows reconstruction of the original value of the occupancy map [in the case when the output value of filtering is a threshold or more, the output value may maintain 1 when the original value is 1, and may maintain 0 when the original value is 0, para 0081].
Regarding claim 5, which claim 1 is incorporated, Oh disclose wherein the at least one memory stores instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: determine the at least one occupancy filter threshold adaptively [Figure 8; the size and value of a filter may be defined in advance or adaptively changed according to a content ... the occupancy_map_filtering_threshold may indicate a discriminant value used in 2D filtering, para 0083, 0088] based on at least one bitdepth parameter [geometry 2D image information and color 2D image information (the examiner interprets color 2D image information to be a bitdepth parameter) with respect to geometry information do not present in all points of the 2D image. Thus, an occupancy map that indicates an area where the points of a point cloud are projected onto a 2D image and an area where the points of a point cloud are not projected onto the 2D image is necessary, 0069].
Regarding claim 6, which claim 1 is incorporated, Oh discloses wherein the at least one memory stores instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: signal information within a visual volumetric video-based coding extension to indicate a type or format of a content of the atlas [Figure 4; the packing block may pack the generated patches ... a texture image coding block, a depth image coding block, an occupancy map coding block, and an auxiliary information coding block may respectively generate an encoded texture image (or a color information image), a coded geometry image (or a depth image), an encoded occupancy map, and encoded auxiliary information, para 0060, 0061], and further to indicate that the bitstream includes video content in a domain [Figure 4 & 5; (a) of Fig. 5 illustrates an occupancy map indicating points projected from source data ... a bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream based on the geometry image, the texture image, the occupancy map, and the auxiliary information. The bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream including the filtering performed, para 0073, 0067].
Oh fails to explicitly disclose comprising the adaptively smoothed occupancy map.
However, Tourapis comprising the adaptively smoothed occupancy map [Figure 2A; video content in a domain comprising the adaptively smoothed occupancy map: a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels ... such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering, para 0169].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh by incorporating the teachings of Tourapis to improve quality, as recognized by Tourapis.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ryde with Oh and Tourapis to obtain the invention as specified in claim 6.
Regarding claim 7, which claim 1 is incorporated, Oh discloses wherein the at least one memory stores instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: signal a visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter present flag [a three-dimensional data encoding apparatus may transmit the following parameters together when encoding and transmitting three-dimensional data. occupancy_map_filtering_flag ... the occupancy_map_filtering_flag indicates whether to undergo a process of two-time upsampling and 2D filtering when compressing and transmitting an occupancy map, para 0084-0085, 0088].
Regarding claim 11, which claim 1 is incorporated, Oh discloses wherein the at least one memory stores instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: signal the at least one occupancy filter threshold per patch [when the size of a patch or the number of 1's included in a patch is a threshold or more, the three-dimensional data encoding apparatus according to an embodiment of the present disclosure may perform upsampling and 2D filtering on a downsampled occupancy map. When the size of a patch or the number of 1's included in a patch is less than the threshold, the three-dimensional data encoding apparatus may perform only upsampling on the downsampled occupancy map, para 0095] in a patch data unit [the three-dimensional data encoding apparatus according to an embodiment of the present disclosure may determine whether to perform 2D filtering based on the size of a patch or the number of 1's included in a patch, para 0094].
Regarding claim 17, Oh discloses an apparatus comprising [Figure 1; a three-dimensional data communication system according to an embodiment may include a three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 and a three-dimensional data receiving apparatus 120, para 0032]: at least one processor [Figure 1; the three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 according to an embodiment may include a processor 111, para 0033]; and at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable storage media, para 0106]: decode, from or along a bitstream [Figure 9; the three-dimensional data receiving apparatus 120 according to an embodiment may obtain and decode three-dimensional data. In the three-dimensional data receiving apparatus 120, the communicator 123 may receive a bitstream and the processor 121 may reconstruct and output three-dimensional data by processing the bitstream, para 0044], occupancy map that indicates which pixels of at least one geometry patch and at least one texture patch are occupied having a valid value [Figure 4; a method of encoding three-dimensional data may include ... an occupancy map having occupancy information indicating the position of a meaningful point in the geometry 2D image information ... the processor 111 may generate a texture image with respect to other attributes by a method similar to the method used to generate a geometry image, by using the reconstructed three-dimensional data and other attribute data, for example, color information, para 0057, 0043]; decode at least one occupancy filter threshold from or along the bitstream [Figure 9; a de-multiplexing block of FIG. 9 may receive a bitstream and obtain, from the bitstream ... an occupancy map, and filtering information. The filtering information may include information about filtering performed by an encoder on an occupancy map. For example, the auxiliary information may include at least one of the occupancy_map_filtering_flag, the occupancy_map_filtering_number, or the occupancy_map_filtering_threshold, para 0100]; and the at least one occupancy filter threshold [Figure 9; a de-multiplexing block of FIG. 9 may receive a bitstream and obtain, from the bitstream ... an occupancy map, and filtering information. The filtering information may include information about filtering performed by an encoder on an occupancy map. For example, the auxiliary information may include at least one of the occupancy_map_filtering_flag, the occupancy_map_filtering_number, or the occupancy_map_filtering_threshold ... A geometry reconstruction block may generate three-dimensional reconstruction data ... based on the decompressed geometry image and the decompressed occupancy map. The geometry reconstruction block may reconstruct position information of points based on the geometry image and the filtered occupancy map, para 0100, 0104].
Oh fails to explicitly disclose an adaptively smoothed occupancy map; wherein the at least one geometry patch and the at least one texture patch are used to represent an encoded three-dimensional mesh; wherein the adaptively smoothed occupancy map has been smoothed in lossy mode using an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to discard at least one edge of an original occupancy map to smooth the original occupancy map, and to reduce a bitrate for transmission of the adaptively smoothed occupancy map; and reconstruct the three-dimensional mesh using the adaptively smoothed occupancy map.
However, Tourapis teaches an adaptively smoothed occupancy map [Figure 2B; the occupancy map may be sent to a decoder to enable the decoder to distinguish between padded and non-padded pixels of an image frame ... a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels ... such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering, para 0085, 0169]; wherein the at least one geometry patch and the at least one texture patch [Figure 2A & 2B; the 2D sampling process may be applied in order to approximate each patch with a uniformly sampled point cloud, which may be stored as a set of 2D patch images describing the geometry/texture/attributes of the point cloud at the patch location ... “Geometry/Texture/Attribute generation” modules, such as modules 210, 212, and 214, generate 2D patch images associated with the geometry/texture/attributes, para 0083, 0084] are used to represent an encoded three- dimensional mesh [mesh-based codecs may be an alternative to the approach described above, para 0171]; wherein the adaptively smoothed occupancy map has been smoothed in lossy mode using an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm [a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels. In some embodiments, such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering ... may allow a rate control module to adapt and assign different, e.g. lower, quantization parameters (QPs), and in an essence a different amount of bits, to the blocks containing the occupancy map edges, para 0169]; and to reduce a bitrate for transmission of the adaptively smoothed occupancy map [rate control/allocation to leverage the occupancy map ... applying the smoothing filter may comprise: a. by exploiting the occupancy map, both the encoder and the decoder may be able to detect boundary points ... they may be fixed for all the points or chosen adaptively, para 0169, 0260]; and reconstruct the three-dimensional mesh using the adaptively smoothed occupancy map [Figure 2B; decoder 230 generates reconstructed point cloud 246 based on receiving the compressed point cloud information 204 ... a decoder, such as decoder 230, includes a de-multiplexer 232, a video decompression module 234, an occupancy map decompression module 236, para 0088, 0089].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh by incorporating the teachings of Tourapis with adaptive smoothing to better support the variability of the network, as recognized by Tourapis.
Neither Oh nor Tourapis appears to explicitly disclose [wherein the adaptively smoothed occupancy map has been smoothed in lossy mode using an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm] to discard at least one edge of an original occupancy map to smooth the original occupancy map.
However, Ryde teaches [wherein the adaptively smoothed occupancy map has been smoothed in lossy mode using an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm] to discard at least one edge of an original occupancy map [we employ an approach based on eigenvalue analysis of the structure tensor, computed for occupied voxels in a 3D occupancy grid ... we compute the ratio of the middle to largest eigenvalues and threshold that, selecting as edges only those voxels with a ratio > 0.2 ... above this threshold, however, we retain not only the ideal edges and corners ... pg. 332, B. Edge Voxel Extraction, right column, third paragraph; pg. 333, Eigenvalue Classification, right column, fourth paragraph; pg. 334, Eigenvalue Classification, left column, first paragraph] to smooth the original occupancy map [for each occupied voxel p, we consider a kxkxk neighborhood centered at p (a neighborhood of half-width h such that k=2h+1). For each voxel in that neighborhood, we use a 3D Gaussian weighing function ... the extraction of the edge voxels by filtering out the often numerous planar voxels dramatically reduces the map size and accelerates the alignment, pg. 333, Structure Tensor Derivation, left column, third paragraph; pg. 337, V. Conclusion, right column, second paragraph].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh by incorporating the teachings of Ryde for faster alignment, as recognized by Ryde.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ryde with Oh and Tourapis to obtain the invention as specified in claim 17.
Regarding claim 18, which claim 17 is incorporated, Oh discloses wherein the at least one memory stories instructions [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable media, para 0106] that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: [translate the adaptively smoothed occupancy map into a binary occupancy map], using the at least one occupancy filter threshold [in the process of performing 2D filtering on an occupancy map in the encoder and the decoder, the value 0 and the value 1 may be determined according to a value of the occupancy_map_filtering_threshold, para 0092].
Oh fails to explicitly disclose translate the adaptively smoothed occupancy map into a binary occupancy map.
However, Tourapis teaches translate the adaptively smoothed occupancy map into a binary occupancy map [an occupancy map (e.g., binary information describing for each pixel or block of pixels whether the pixel or block of pixels are padded or not) ... this information may also be used at the decoder ... deblocking and sample adaptive offset (SAO), as well as adaptive loop filter (ALF), para 0085, 0488].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh by incorporating the teachings of Tourapis with translating an adaptively smoothed occupancy map into a binary occupancy map to improve quality, as recognized by Tourapis.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ryde with Oh and Tourapis to obtain the invention as specified in claim 18.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh (US 2022/0084254 A1) in view of Tourapis (US 2021/0256735 A1) and further in view of Ryde ("Extracting edge voxels from 3D volumetric maps to reduce map size and accelerate mapping alignment." ), as applied above, and Jafari et al. (Jafari, Kian, and Florent Dupont. "Compression of 3D mesh sequences based on an adaptive 3D wavelet transform." Three-Dimensional Image Processing (3DIP) and Applications. Vol. 7526. SPIE, 2010) (hereafter, “Jafari”).
Regarding claim 3, which claim 2 is incorporated, neither Oh, Tourapis, nor Ryde appears to explicitly disclose wherein the multiscale filtering approach comprises: a Gaussian pyramid; a discrete wavelet transform; or a multi-resolution set of bank filters.
However, Jafari teaches wherein the multiscale filtering approach comprises: a Gaussian pyramid; a discrete wavelet transform; or a multi-resolution set of bank filters [Figure 1; data is transformed to a spectral base in this step by a 3D wavelet algorithm, pg. 2, 2. Overview of the 3D Wavelet Based Technique, first paragraph].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis and further in view of Ryde by incorporating the teachings of Jafari with discrete wavelet transformation to make a more efficient compression, as recognized by Jafari.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Jafari with Oh, Tourapis, and Ryde to obtain the invention as specified in claim 3.
Claims 8-10, 12-16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh (US 2022/0084254 A1) in view of Tourapis (US 2021/0256735 A1) and further in view of Ryde et al. ("Extracting edge voxels from 3D volumetric maps to reduce map size and accelerate mapping alignment."), as applied above, and Joshi et al. (US 2020/0219288 A1) (hereafter, “Joshi”).
Regarding claim 8, which claim 7 is incorporated, neither Oh, Tourapis, nor Ryde appears to explicitly disclose the visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter present flag having a value of one specifies that a visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter extension syntax structure is present within a visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set syntax structure; and the visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter present flag having a value of zero specifies that the visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter extension syntax structure is not present within the visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set syntax structure.
However, Joshi teaches the visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter present flag having a value of one specifies that a visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter extension syntax structure is present within a visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set syntax structure [if the “sps_lossy_occupancy_map_compression_enabled_flag” is equal to one, it indicates that the occupancy map is compressed in a lossy manner ... if the encoding engines 526 encode the modified occupancy map frames 522 in a lossy manner and the occupancy map precision of one is used, then the encoder 510 generates a flag that instructs the decoder 550 to disable color and geometry smoothing, para 0104, 0116]; and the visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter present flag having a value of zero specifies that the visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter extension syntax structure is not present within the visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set syntax structure [if the “sps_lossy_occupancy_map_compression_enabled_flag” is equal to zero, it indicates that the occupancy map is coded losslessly ... if the encoding engines 526 encode the modified occupancy map frames 522 in a lossy manner and the occupancy map precision of two or four is used, then a the encoder 510 generates a flag that instructs the decoder 550 to perform 2D filtering on the decodes occupancy map data, para 0104, 0116].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis and further in view of Ryde by incorporating the teachings of Joshi to improve the visual quality of reconstruction, as recognized by Joshi.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Joshi with Oh, Tourapis, and Ryde to obtain the invention as specified in claim 8.
Regarding claim 9, which claim 1 is incorporated, neither Oh, Tourapis, nor Ryde appears to explicitly disclose wherein the at least one memory stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: signal an occupancy filter threshold syntax element within a visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set extension; wherein the occupancy filter threshold syntax element indicates the at least one occupancy filter threshold configured to be used to reconstruct the occupancy map within an atlas with a given atlas identifier.
However, Joshi teaches wherein the at least one memory stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor [the processor 210 executes instructions that can be stored in a memory 230, para 0052], cause the apparatus at least to: signal an occupancy filter threshold syntax element within a visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set extension [Syntax (1) below describes an occupancy parameter set syntax ... The syntax element “lossy_occupancy_map_compression_threshold” of Syntax (1) indicates the threshold will be used by the decoder 550 to derive the binary occupancy map from the decoded occupancy map video, para 0100]; wherein the occupancy filter threshold syntax element indicates the at least one occupancy filter threshold configured to be used to reconstruct the occupancy map within an atlas with a given atlas identifier [the syntax element “occupancy_codec_id” of Syntax (1) indicates the identifier of the codec that is used to compress the occupancy map information ... Syntax (1) occupancy_information_set( atlasId ) ... oi_lossy_occupancy_map_compression_threshold[ atlasId ], para 0100].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis and further in view of Ryde by incorporating the teachings of Joshi to correct isolated pixels, as recognized by Joshi.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Joshi with Oh, Tourapis, and Ryde to obtain the invention as specified in claim 9.
Regarding claim 10, which claim 1 is incorporated, neither Oh, Tourapis, nor Ryde appears to explicitly disclose wherein the at least one memory stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: signal the at least one occupancy filter threshold as part of: a common atlas sequence parameter set; an atlas sequence parameter set; a common atlas frame parameter set; an atlas frame parameter set; or a supplemental enhancement information message.
However, Joshi teaches wherein the at least one memory stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor [the processor 210 executes instructions that can be stored in a memory 230, para 0052], cause the apparatus at least to: signal the at least one occupancy filter threshold as part of: a common atlas sequence parameter set; an atlas sequence parameter set; a common atlas frame parameter set; an atlas frame parameter set; or a supplemental enhancement information message [atlas sequence parameter set (the examiner interprets the claim limitation to require one component as recited): Syntax (1) below describes an occupancy parameter set syntax ... The syntax element “lossy_occupancy_map_compression_threshold” of Syntax (1) indicates the threshold ... oi_lossy_occupancy_map_compression_threshold[ atlasId ], para 0100].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis and further in view of Ryde by incorporating the teachings of Joshi to determine valid pixels for the decoder, as recognized by Joshi.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above with known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Joshi with Oh, Tourapis, and Ryde to obtain the invention as specified in claim 10.
Regarding claim 12, Oh discloses an apparatus comprising [Figure 1; a three-dimensional data communication system according to an embodiment may include a three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 and a three-dimensional data receiving apparatus 120, para 0032]: at least one processor [Figure 1; the three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 according to an embodiment may include a processor 111, para 0033]; and at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to [the disclosed embodiments may be implemented by an S/W program including instructions stored in computer-readable storage media, para 0106]: signal information within a visual volumetric video- based coding extension to indicate a type or format of a content of an atlas [Figure 4; the packing block may pack the generated patches ... a texture image coding block, a depth image coding block, an occupancy map coding block, and an auxiliary information coding block may respectively generate an encoded texture image (or a color information image), a coded geometry image (or a depth image), an encoded occupancy map, and encoded auxiliary information, para 0060, 0061], the atlas comprising at least one geometry patch [Figure 4; the processor of the three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 may separate three-dimensional data into geometry information including position information and other attribute information such as a color and the like, para 0035] and at least one texture patch used [Figure 4; the processor 111 may generate a texture image with respect to other attributes by a method similar to the method used to generate a geometry image, by using the reconstructed three-dimensional data and other attribute data, for example, color information, para 0043]; create an occupancy map that indicates which pixels of the at least one geometry patch and the at least one texture patch are occupied having a valid value [geometry 2D image information and color 2D image information with respect to geometry information do not present in all points of the 2D image. Thus, an occupancy map that indicates an area where the points of a point cloud are projected onto a 2D image and an area where the points of a point cloud are not projected onto the 2D image is necessary, para 0069]; wherein the information within the visual volumetric video-based coding extension indicates a bitstream including video content in a domain [Figure 4 & 5; (a) of Fig. 5 illustrates an occupancy map indicating points projected from source data ... a bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream based on the geometry image, the texture image, the occupancy map, and the auxiliary information. The bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream including the filtering performed, para 0073, 0067]; signal a visual volumetric video-based coding occupancy filter present flag associated with at least one occupancy filter threshold configured to be used [a three-dimensional data encoding apparatus may transmit the following parameters together when encoding and transmitting three-dimensional data. occupancy_map_filtering_flag, occupancy_map_filtering_number, occupancy_map_filtering_threshold, para 0084-0087].
Oh fails to explicitly disclose to represent a three-dimensional mesh; apply an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map, and the reduce a bitrate for transmission of the occupancy map, to generate an adaptively smoothed occupancy map; comprising an adaptively smoothed occupancy map configured to be used to reconstruct the three-dimensional mesh; to be used to reconstruct the three-dimensional mesh; signal an occupancy filter threshold syntax element within the visual volumetric video-based coding extension.
However, Tourapis teaches to represent a three-dimensional mesh [the encoder 200 receives uncompressed point cloud 202 and generates compressed point cloud information 204 ... in some embodiments, mesh-based codecs may be an alternative to the approach described above, para 0080, 0171]; apply an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map [to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map] [a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels. In some embodiments, such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering ... may allow a rate control module to adapt and assign different, e.g. lower, quantization parameters (QPs), and in an essence a different amount of bits, to the blocks containing the occupancy map edges, para 0169], and the reduce a bitrate for transmission of the occupancy map, to generate an adaptively smoothed occupancy map [rate control/allocation to leverage the occupancy map ... applying the smoothing filter may comprise: a. by exploiting the occupancy map, both the encoder and the decoder may be able to detect boundary points ... they may be fixed for all the points or chosen adaptively, para 0169, 0260]; comprising an adaptively smoothed occupancy map [Figure 2A; video content in a domain comprising the adaptively smoothed occupancy map: a video encoder may leverage an occupancy map, which describes for each pixel of an image whether it stores information belonging to the point cloud or padded pixels ... such information may permit enabling various features adaptively, such as de-blocking, adaptive loop filtering (ALF), or shape adaptive offset (SAO) filtering, para 0169] configured to be used to reconstruct the three-dimensional mesh [decoder 230 generates reconstructed point cloud 246 based on receiving the compressed point cloud information 204 ... mesh-based codecs may be an alternative to the approach described above, para 0088, 0171]; to be used to reconstruct the three-dimensional mesh [decoder 230 generates reconstructed point cloud 246 based on receiving the compressed point cloud information 204 ... mesh-based codecs may be an alternative to the approach described above, para 0088, 0171].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh by incorporating the teachings of Tourapis with adaptive smoothing to better support the variability of the network, as recognized by Tourapis.
Neither Oh nor Tourapis appears to explicitly disclose [apply an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map] to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map to smooth the occupancy map; signal an occupancy filter threshold syntax element within the visual volumetric video-based coding parameter set extension.
However, Ryde teaches [apply an adaptive smoothing filter algorithm to the occupancy map] to discard at least one edge of the occupancy map [we employ an approach based on eigenvalue analysis of the structure tensor, computed for occupied voxels in a 3D occupancy grid ... we compute the ratio of the middle to largest eigenvalues and threshold that, selecting as edges only those voxels with a ratio > 0.2 ... above this threshold, however, we retain not only the ideal edges and corners ... pg. 332, B. Edge Voxel Extraction, right column, third paragraph; pg. 333, Eigenvalue Classification, right column, fourth paragraph; pg. 334, Eigenvalue Classification, left column, first paragraph] to smooth the occupancy map [for each occupied voxel p, we consider a kxkxk neighborhood centered at p (a neighborhood of half-width h such that k=2h+1). For each voxel in that neighborhood, we use a 3D Gaussian weighing function ... the extraction of the edge voxels by filtering out the often numerous planar voxels dramatically reduces the map size and accelerates the alignment, pg. 333, Structure Tensor Derivation, left column, third paragraph; pg. 337, V. Conclusion, right column, second paragraph].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis by incorporating the teachings of Ryde for faster alignment, as recognized by Ryde.
Neither Oh, Tourapis, nor Ryde appear to explicitly disclose signal an occupancy filter threshold syntax element within the visual volumetric video-based coding extension.
However, Joshi teaches signal an occupancy filter threshold syntax element within the visual volumetric video-based coding extension [[Syntax (1) below describes an occupancy parameter set syntax ... The syntax element “lossy_occupancy_map_compression_threshold” of Syntax (1) indicates the threshold will be used by the decoder 550 to derive the binary occupancy map from the decoded occupancy map video, para 0100].
It would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Oh in view of Tourapis and further in view of Ryde by incorporating the teachings of Joshi to correct isolated pixels, as recognized by Joshi.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above wi