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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1, & 3-12 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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, 3, 7, & 9-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Starosolski et al (Z. Starosolski et al., “Indocyanine Green Fluorescence in second near-infrared (NIR-II) window,” PLOS ONE, vol. 12, no. 11, Nov. 2017; hereinafter referred to as Starosolski) in view of Shida et al (US20140024948A1; hereinafter referred to as Shida)
Regarding Claim 1, Starosolski discloses an image forming apparatus (“In this study, we investigated ICG as a NIR-II dye. The absorbance and NIR-II fluorescence emission of ICG were measured in different media (PBS, plasma andethanol) for a range of ICG concentrations.” [Abstract]) comprising:
an excitation light source that irradiates an observation target with excitation light for exciting a fluorescent substance contained in the observation target (“The capillary tubes were filled with solutions of either ICG or IR-E1050 in plasma and PBS…. The phantoms were excited by the laser source described above using higher settings of 475 mA and 2V, 400 mW optical power” [Pg. 4], “The hind limb region of the animal was exposed to the 785 nm laser source and baseline pre-contrast NIR-I and NIR-II images were acquired using the respective cameras.” [Pg. 4]);
an imaging part that receives first infrared light and second infrared light split from light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light (“The in vivo imaging setup for simultaneous acquisition with NIR-I and NIR-II cameras utilized a gold plated mirror. The gold mirror was selected due to its good reflectance property (> 97.5%), large area of coverage (100 cm 2 ) and absence of light loss due to transmission (Fig 1B).” [Pg. 10], Fig. 1B below shows parallel acquisition of 2 infrared lights at differing wavelengths split from the observation target) ,
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the first infrared light including fluorescence from the fluorescent substance having a wavelength in a short wavelength infrared region (“A Raptor-Ninox 640 SWIR camera (acquired from Phoenix Engineering Inc., Berkeley Lake, GA, USA) was used to acquire images (50 frames at 40 ms each) in the NIR-II window. A long pass 1100 nm filter (Premium Longpass filter, cut-on wavelength 1100 nm, FELH1100, ThorLabs Inc., Newton, NJ, USA) was placed in front of the camera lens thus restricting wave lengths below, and allowing wavelengths above 1100 nm to pass through the camera lens.” [Pg. 3]),
and the second infrared light including fluorescence from the fluorescent substance having a wavelength in a wavelength region on a shorter wavelength side than the short wavelength infrared region (“Images in the NIR-I window (for ICG) were captured (50 frames at 20 ms each) using a Pio neer camera (Basler, Ahrensburg, Germany), with a Sony ICX625 CCD sensor 2456 x 2058 pixels (5 Mpixels), fitted with 810–830 nm bandpass filter. The imaging setup for the Intrali pid phantom is shown in Fig 1B.” [Pg. 3]);
the first image indicating a boundary of a specific region including the fluorescent substance corresponding to the first infrared light received by the imaging part (“Intralipid 1 phantom imaging. NIR-I and II images of capillary tube filled with ICG in plasma (50µM) immersed in 1% Intralipid 1 , at depths of 1, 2, and 4 mm from the surface are shown in Fig 3A. The edges of capillary tube is clearly visible in the NIR-II window for the three depths with minimal scattering effects” [Pg.6],
and the second image including a specific region having an image density corresponding to the second infrared light received by the imaging part (“Average intensity image of the 500 images stack was used for analysis. Quantitative analysis of enhancement was performed based on measurements of signal intensities (SI) in the manually selected regions of interest (ROIs). Signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) were calculated as mean signal intensity in ROIs divided by noise, where noise was represented by the standard deviation (SD) of the signal intensity in the air. The placement of ROIs is illustrated in S3 Fig. Contrast to noise ratios (CNR) for the tissue phantoms were calculated as a difference between SNR of a tube in tissue and SNR of the region proximal to tube expressed by the Eq (1)” [Pg. 5], “In the NIR-I window, the tube at 1 mm depth is visible, while at 2 and 4 mm the scattering effects are more pronounced. Analysis of the normalized intensities at different depths shows that both NIR-I and II suffer losses in intensities as seen in Fig 3B. The intensity at 5mm depth drops to 0.046 +/- 0.001 for NIR-II and 0.124 +/- 0.004 for NIR-I respectively.” [Pg. 6]),
wherein the light from the observation target is fluorescence of a fluorescent reagent Indocyanine green (ICG) (“In vitro and in vivo testing were performed using a custom-built spectral NIR assembly to facilitate simultaneous imaging in NIR-I and NIR-II window. In vitro studies using ICG were performed using capillary tubes (as a simulation of blood vessels) embedded in Intralipid solution and tissue phantoms to evaluate depth of tissue penetration in NIR-I and NIR-II window.” [Abstract]),
Starosolski does not specifically disclose an image processing unit that generates a composite image by combining a first image and a second image and wherein the image processing unit includes an infrared image combining unit that generates the first image indicating a contour of an image of the specific region by binarizing an amount of the first infrared light received by the imaging part, and combines the first image and the second image.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Shida teaches a fluoroscopy apparatus including a fluorescence imaging portion that acquires a fluorescence image of biological tissue [Abstract].
Shida also teaches an image processing unit that generates a composite image by combining a first image and a second image and wherein the image processing unit includes an infrared image combining unit that generates the first image indicating a contour of an image of the specific region by binarizing an amount of the first infrared light received by the imaging part, and combines the first image and the second image (“ the fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 identifies a region having a predetermined first luminance value (predetermined first fluorescence intensity) m, as shown in FIG. 3( b). Here, the predetermined first luminance value is determined to be a value that is sufficiently higher than the value of weak luminance exhibited by the background region and that is sufficiently lower than the luminance value due to the fluorescence from the fluorescent dye. In other words, the region identified in the first image-processing mode is an outline B′ that surrounds substantially the entire fluorescence region B. As shown in FIG. 4, an identification image G1 generated in this way is an image in which substantially the entire fluorescence region B is shown as a region inside the outline B′. By doing so, in the subsequently generated superimposed image, a clear biological-tissue A image can also be displayed in the region from which the fluorescence is emitted while clearly displaying a boundary between the region from which fluorescence is emitted and the region from which fluorescence is not emitted.” [0027], “The superimposed-image generating portion 34 generates a superimposed image by superimposing the identification image G1 or G2 generated by the fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 on the white-light image generated by the white-light-image generating portion 31. In other words, the superimposed image is an image in which, in a white-light image showing the shape of tissue in the body, substantially the entire fluorescence region B is specified by the outline B′ or the maximum-fluorescence region is specified by the marker C. The superimposed-image generating portion 34 outputs the generated superimposed image to the output portion 36.” [0031])
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of StarosolskI as outlined above with an image processing unit that generates a composite image by combining a first image and a second image and wherein the image processing unit includes an infrared image combining unit that generates the first image indicating a contour of an image of the specific region by binarizing an amount of the first infrared light received by the imaging part, and combines the first image and the second image as taught by Shida, because in the subsequently generated superimposed image a clear biological-tissue A image can also be displayed in the region from which the fluorescence is emitted while clearly displaying a boundary between the region from which fluorescence is emitted and the region from which fluorescence is not emitted [0027].
Regarding Claim 3, Starosolski discloses that the imaging part includes a splitting unit that splits the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light into a component of the first infrared light and a component of the second infrared light (“The hind limb region of the animal was exposed to the 785 nm laser source and baseline pre-contrast NIR-I and NIR-II images were acquired using the respective cameras. A schematic of the in vivo imaging set-up is shown in Fig 1B. In order to acquire NIR-I images, a gold plated mirror (Mirror FS 1/10 wave gold 100 SQ, Edmund Optics, NJ, USA) was utilized to reflect the image from the animal to the camera lens. ICG injected ani mals were imaged simultaneously by the NIR-I and NIR-II cameras.” [Pg. 4-5]).
Regarding Claim 7, Starosolski discloses that the imaging part includes a filter that cuts the excitation light from the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light (“A Raptor-Ninox 640 SWIR camera (acquired from Phoenix Engineering Inc., Berkeley Lake, GA, USA) was used to acquire images (50 frames at 40 ms each) in the NIR-II window. A long pass 1100 nm filter (Premium Longpass filter, cut-on wavelength 1100 nm, FELH1100, ThorLabs Inc., Newton, NJ, USA) was placed in front of the camera lens thus restricting wave lengths below, and allowing wavelengths above 1100 nm to pass through the camera lens. Images in the NIR-I window (for ICG) were captured (50 frames at 20 ms each) using a Pio neer camera (Basler, Ahrensburg, Germany), with a Sony ICX625 CCD sensor 2456 x 2058 pixels (5 Mpixels), fitted with 810–830 nm bandpass filter.” [Pg. 3]).
Regarding Claim 9, Starosolski discloses that the second infrared light is 750 nm or more and less than 900 nm, and the first infrared light is 900 nm or more and 1600 nm or less (“A Raptor-Ninox 640 SWIR camera (acquired from Phoenix Engineering Inc., Berkeley Lake, GA, USA) was used to acquire images (50 frames at 40 ms each) in the NIR-II window. A long pass 1100 nm filter (Premium Longpass filter, cut-on wavelength 1100 nm, FELH1100, ThorLabs Inc., Newton, NJ, USA) was placed in front of the camera lens thus restricting wave lengths below, and allowing wavelengths above 1100 nm to pass through the camera lens. Images in the NIR-I window (for ICG) were captured (50 frames at 20 ms each) using a Pio neer camera (Basler, Ahrensburg, Germany), with a Sony ICX625 CCD sensor 2456 x 2058 pixels (5 Mpixels), fitted with 810–830 nm bandpass filter.” [Pg. 3]).
Regarding Claim 10, Starosolski discloses all limitations noted above except that the binarization of the amount of the first infrared light uses a threshold value to convert the amount of the first infrared light into two values of black and white.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Shida teaches the binarization of the amount of the first infrared light uses a threshold value to convert the amount of the first infrared light into two values of black and white (“in the first image-processing mode, the fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 may select a pixel group having a luminance value equal to or greater than the predetermined first luminance value m. By doing so, under the first processing mode, the entire region in the biological tissue A from which the fluorescence is emitted, for example, the entire diseased region, can be presented to the operator. In addition, in the second image-processing mode, the fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 may select a pixel group having a luminance value equal to or greater than the predetermined second luminance value n. By doing so, under the second processing mode, a maximum-fluorescence region that includes the highest fluorescence intensity is identified, and thus, a region in the biological tissue A from which the most intense fluorescence is emitted, for example, a region in which a disease is most advanced, can be presented to the operator. The fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 may display the selected pixel groups in predetermined display modes, for example, by using predetermined colors.” [0030])
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of StarosolskI as outlined above with the binarization of the amount of the first infrared light uses a threshold value to convert the amount of the first infrared light into two values of black and white as taught by Shida, because in the subsequently generated superimposed image a clear biological-tissue A image can also be displayed in the region from which the fluorescence is emitted while clearly displaying a boundary between the region from which fluorescence is emitted and the region from which fluorescence is not emitted [0027].
Regarding Claim 11, Starosolski discloses an image forming apparatus (“In this study, we investigated ICG as a NIR-II dye. The absorbance and NIR-II fluorescence emission of ICG were measured in different media (PBS, plasma andethanol) for a range of ICG concentrations.” [Abstract]) comprising:
an excitation light source that irradiates an observation target with excitation light for exciting a fluorescent substance contained in the observation target (“The capillary tubes were filled with solutions of either ICG or IR-E1050 in plasma and PBS…. The phantoms were excited by the laser source described above using higher settings of 475 mA and 2V, 400 mW optical power” [Pg. 4], “The hind limb region of the animal was exposed to the 785 nm laser source and baseline pre-contrast NIR-I and NIR-II images were acquired using the respective cameras.” [Pg. 4]);
an imaging part that receives first infrared light and second infrared light split from light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light (“The in vivo imaging setup for simultaneous acquisition with NIR-I and NIR-II cameras utilized a gold plated mirror. The gold mirror was selected due to its good reflectance property (> 97.5%), large area of coverage (100 cm 2 ) and absence of light loss due to transmission (Fig 1B).” [Pg. 10], Fig. 1B below shows parallel acquisition of 2 infrared lights at differing wavelengths split from the observation target) ,
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the first infrared light including fluorescence from the fluorescent substance having a wavelength in a short wavelength infrared region (“A Raptor-Ninox 640 SWIR camera (acquired from Phoenix Engineering Inc., Berkeley Lake, GA, USA) was used to acquire images (50 frames at 40 ms each) in the NIR-II window. A long pass 1100 nm filter (Premium Longpass filter, cut-on wavelength 1100 nm, FELH1100, ThorLabs Inc., Newton, NJ, USA) was placed in front of the camera lens thus restricting wave lengths below, and allowing wavelengths above 1100 nm to pass through the camera lens.” [Pg. 3]),
and the second infrared light including fluorescence from the fluorescent substance having a wavelength in a wavelength region on a shorter wavelength side than the short wavelength infrared region (“Images in the NIR-I window (for ICG) were captured (50 frames at 20 ms each) using a Pio neer camera (Basler, Ahrensburg, Germany), with a Sony ICX625 CCD sensor 2456 x 2058 pixels (5 Mpixels), fitted with 810–830 nm bandpass filter. The imaging setup for the Intrali pid phantom is shown in Fig 1B.” [Pg. 3]);
the first image indicating a boundary of a specific region including the fluorescent substance corresponding to the first infrared light received by the imaging part (“Intralipid 1 phantom imaging. NIR-I and II images of capillary tube filled with ICG in plasma (50µM) immersed in 1% Intralipid 1 , at depths of 1, 2, and 4 mm from the surface are shown in Fig 3A. The edges of capillary tube is clearly visible in the NIR-II window for the three depths with minimal scattering effects” [Pg.6],
and the second image including a specific region having an image density corresponding to the second infrared light received by the imaging part (“Average intensity image of the 500 images stack was used for analysis. Quantitative analysis of enhancement was performed based on measurements of signal intensities (SI) in the manually selected regions of interest (ROIs). Signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) were calculated as mean signal intensity in ROIs divided by noise, where noise was represented by the standard deviation (SD) of the signal intensity in the air. The placement of ROIs is illustrated in S3 Fig. Contrast to noise ratios (CNR) for the tissue phantoms were calculated as a difference between SNR of a tube in tissue and SNR of the region proximal to tube expressed by the Eq (1)” [Pg. 5], “In the NIR-I window, the tube at 1 mm depth is visible, while at 2 and 4 mm the scattering effects are more pronounced. Analysis of the normalized intensities at different depths shows that both NIR-I and II suffer losses in intensities as seen in Fig 3B. The intensity at 5mm depth drops to 0.046 +/- 0.001 for NIR-II and 0.124 +/- 0.004 for NIR-I respectively.” [Pg. 6]),
wherein the second infrared light has a wavelength of 750 nm or more and less than 900 nm, the first infrared light has a wavelength of 900 nm or more and 1600 nm or less, and the wavelengths of the first infrared light and the second infrared light do not overlap each other (“A Raptor-Ninox 640 SWIR camera (acquired from Phoenix Engineering Inc., Berkeley Lake, GA, USA) was used to acquire images (50 frames at 40 ms each) in the NIR-II window. A long pass 1100 nm filter (Premium Longpass filter, cut-on wavelength 1100 nm, FELH1100, ThorLabs Inc., Newton, NJ, USA) was placed in front of the camera lens thus restricting wave lengths below, and allowing wavelengths above 1100 nm to pass through the camera lens… Images in the NIR-I window (for ICG) were captured (50 frames at 20 ms each) using a Pio neer camera (Basler, Ahrensburg, Germany), with a Sony ICX625 CCD sensor 2456 x 2058 pixels (5 Mpixels), fitted with 810–830 nm bandpass filter. The imaging setup for the Intrali pid phantom is shown in Fig 1B.” [Pg. 3]),
Starosolski does not specifically disclose an image processing unit that generates a composite image by combining a first image and a second image and wherein the image processing unit includes an infrared image combining unit that generates the first image indicating a contour of an image of the specific region by binarizing an amount of the first infrared light received by the imaging part, and combines the first image and the second image.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Shida teaches a fluoroscopy apparatus including a fluorescence imaging portion that acquires a fluorescence image of biological tissue [Abstract].
Shida also teaches an image processing unit that generates a composite image by combining a first image and a second image and wherein the image processing unit includes an infrared image combining unit that generates the first image indicating a contour of an image of the specific region by binarizing an amount of the first infrared light received by the imaging part, and combines the first image and the second image (“ the fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 identifies a region having a predetermined first luminance value (predetermined first fluorescence intensity) m, as shown in FIG. 3( b). Here, the predetermined first luminance value is determined to be a value that is sufficiently higher than the value of weak luminance exhibited by the background region and that is sufficiently lower than the luminance value due to the fluorescence from the fluorescent dye. In other words, the region identified in the first image-processing mode is an outline B′ that surrounds substantially the entire fluorescence region B. As shown in FIG. 4, an identification image G1 generated in this way is an image in which substantially the entire fluorescence region B is shown as a region inside the outline B′. By doing so, in the subsequently generated superimposed image, a clear biological-tissue A image can also be displayed in the region from which the fluorescence is emitted while clearly displaying a boundary between the region from which fluorescence is emitted and the region from which fluorescence is not emitted.” [0027], “The superimposed-image generating portion 34 generates a superimposed image by superimposing the identification image G1 or G2 generated by the fluorescence-region identifying portion 33 on the white-light image generated by the white-light-image generating portion 31. In other words, the superimposed image is an image in which, in a white-light image showing the shape of tissue in the body, substantially the entire fluorescence region B is specified by the outline B′ or the maximum-fluorescence region is specified by the marker C. The superimposed-image generating portion 34 outputs the generated superimposed image to the output portion 36.” [0031])
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of StarosolskI as outlined above with an image processing unit that generates a composite image by combining a first image and a second image and wherein the image processing unit includes an infrared image combining unit that generates the first image indicating a contour of an image of the specific region by binarizing an amount of the first infrared light received by the imaging part, and combines the first image and the second image as taught by Shida, because in the subsequently generated superimposed image a clear biological-tissue A image can also be displayed in the region from which the fluorescence is emitted while clearly displaying a boundary between the region from which fluorescence is emitted and the region from which fluorescence is not emitted [0027].
Regarding Claim 12, Starosolski discloses that the first infrared light has a first resolution and a first brightness and the second infrared light has a second resolution and a second brightness, the second brightness being higher than the first brightness and the second resolution being lower than the first resolution (“A full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) analysis done at different depths in the two windows is plotted in Fig 3C. The FWHM analysis of the tube at a depth of 1 mm from the Intralipid 1 surface measures 1.17 +/- 0.06 and 2.97 +/- 0.08 mm in the NIR-II and NIR-I windows respectively.” [Pg. 6], “Analysis of the normalized intensities at different depths shows that both NIR-I and II suffer losses in intensities as seen in Fig 3B. The intensity at 5mm depth drops to 0.046 +/- 0.001 for NIR-II and 0.124 +/- 0.004 for NIR-I respectively.” [Pg. 6]).
Claims 4-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Starosolski in view of Shida as applied to Claim 3 above, and further in view of Kikuchi (US20210030263A1; hereinafter referred to as Kikuchi)
Regarding Claim 4, Starosolski in view of Shida discloses all limitations noted above except that the splitting unit further splits the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light into light having a visible light wavelength.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Kikuchi teaches an image-formation optical system that causes an image in each of wavelength bands to be formed in a predetermined imaging device [Abstract].
Kikuchi also teaches that the splitting unit further splits the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light into light having a visible light wavelength (“a color-separation-prism optical system 20 includes, for example, as schematically illustrated in the FIG. 2A, at least a color-separation prism 201, and a dichroic film 203 having a predetermined optical characteristic is provided inside the color-separation prism 201.” [0065], “The visible light ray transmitted through the first prism 211 is guided to the visible light imaging device 3. In this case, an infrared cut filter 217 may be provided between an exit surface of the first prism 211 and the visible light imaging device 3.” [0077])
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Starosolsk in view of Shida as outlined above with the splitting unit further splits the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light into light having a visible light wavelength as taught by Kikuchi, because it allows for the system to maintain focus as well as resolution across wavelengths [0006].
Regarding Claim 5, Starosolski in view of Shida discloses all limitations noted above except that the image processing unit further includes a visible light image processing unit that generates a visible light image corresponding to the light having a visible light wavelength received by the imaging part, and the visible light image is added to the image obtained by combining the first image and the second image at a specific ratio to incorporate visible light information into the composite image to generate a new composite image.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Kikuchi teaches the image processing unit further includes a visible light image processing unit that generates a visible light image corresponding to the light having a visible light wavelength received by the imaging part, and the visible light image is added to the image obtained by combining the first image and the second image at a specific ratio to incorporate visible light information into the composite image to generate a new composite image (“Captured picture images (a visible light picture image and a fluorescence picture image) generated in the imaging unit 503 are outputted to the CCU 505, and the picture images are superimposed by the CCU 505, for example, to generate a superimposed picture image. The captured visible light picture image and fluorescence picture image, and the generated superimposed picture image are displayed on the display apparatus 507 under the control of the CCU 505.” [0130])
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Starosolsk in view of Shida as outlined above with the image processing unit further includes a visible light image processing unit that generates a visible light image corresponding to the light having a visible light wavelength received by the imaging part, and the visible light image is added to the image obtained by combining the first image and the second image at a specific ratio to incorporate visible light information into the composite image to generate a new composite image as taught by Kikuchi, because it allows for the system to maintain focus as well as resolution across wavelengths [0006].
Regarding Claim 6, Starosolski in view of Shida discloses all limitations noted above except that the imaging part includes an optical system that corrects a focus shift of the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light in a range of from visible light to short wavelength infrared light.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Kikuchi teaches the imaging part includes an optical system that corrects a focus shift of the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light in a range of from visible light to short wavelength infrared light (“The image-formation optical system 10 is an optical system for causing images of the imaging target (specifically, an image in the visible light wavelength band and an image in the fluorescence wavelength band belonging to the near-infrared wavelength band) to be each formed in the corresponding imaging device. The image-formation optical system 10 according to the present embodiment has a lens configuration as described in detail below, thereby being corrected in axial chromatic aberration and exhibiting an excellent optical characteristic in each of the fluorescence wavelength band and the visible light wavelength band. Such an image-formation optical system 10 is described in more detail below.” [0060], “in the image-formation optical system 10 according to the present embodiment, imaging positions of the visible light ray and the near-infrared ray are different from each other due to axial chromatic aberration. Thus, in FIG. 2A, for example, even if the fluorescence imaging device 4 is provided at a position optically conjugate with the visible light imaging device 3, a situation arises in which the image is in focus in the visible light imaging device 3 while the image is not in focus in the fluorescence imaging device 4. However, the rigid-scope optical system 1 according to the present embodiment is able to easily correct such axial chromatic aberration by branching the optical path into two by the color-separation-prism optical system 20 and providing two types of imaging devices” [0068])
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Starosolsk in view of Shida as outlined above with the imaging part includes an optical system that corrects a focus shift of the light from the observation target irradiated with the excitation light in a range of from visible light to short wavelength infrared light as taught by Kikuchi, because it allows for the system to maintain focus as well as resolution across wavelengths [0006].
Claims 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Starosolski in view of Shida as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Ishihara (US20120302893A1)
Regarding Claim 8, Starosolski in view of Shida discloses all limitations noted above except that the image processing unit generates the composite image in which a brightness signal of a region outside the specific region in the first image is corrected to zero.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Ishihara teaches a fluorescence endoscope device that includes a light source; an image generating portion that captures an image of fluorescence generated at a subject due to irradiation with excitation light to obtain a fluorescence image [Abstract].
Ishihara also teaches the image processing unit generates the composite image in which a brightness signal of a region outside the specific region in the first image is corrected to zero (“The fluorescence-image correcting portion 49 performs correction such that the gradation values of the pixels of the fluorescence image having a lower gradation value than the first threshold inputted from the first-threshold setting portion 45A are substituted with zero. Furthermore, the fluorescence-image correcting portion 49 performs correction such that the gradation values of the pixels of the corrected fluorescence image having the same coordinates as the coordinates extracted by the coordinate extracting portion 47 are substituted with zero. As a result, a corrected fluorescence image obtained by correcting the fluorescence image twice is generated. Furthermore, the fluorescence-image correcting portion 49 sends the generated corrected fluorescence image to the monitor 50, along with the white-light image and the fluorescence image.” [0043], .
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled person in the art before the effective filing
date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Starosolsk in view of Shida as outlined above with the image processing unit generates the composite image in which a brightness signal of a region outside the specific region in the first image is corrected to zero as taught by Ishihara, because it allows to obtain a precise corrected fluorescence image having few factors that degrade the image quality. [0061].
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's
disclosure (US20180082411A1).
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to STEVEN MALDONADO whose telephone number is 703-756-1421. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 am-4:00 pm PST M-Th Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at
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/Steven Maldonado/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3797
/JOSEPH M SANTOS RODRIGUEZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3797
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