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 filed May 11, 2026 with respect to claims 1 – 20 have been considered and were found persuasive. The finality of the last Office Action is hereby withdrawn in view of new grounds of rejection, and this new rejection will be non-final.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Wang et. al. US Patent Application Publication No. US-20020109113-A1 (hereinafter Wang).
Regarding claim 1, Wang discloses method, comprising: for i=1, ..., N, one by one, exposing a radiation detector to a radiation beam (i) thereby causing the radiation detector to capture a partial image (i) of the radiation beam (i), wherein N is an integer greater than 1 (Wang in [0004] discloses, “one end of the cassette is placed in the CR reader and the first phosphor screen is scanned and stored, the cassette is then removed from the reader and inverted to allow the second phosphor screen to be read in the same manner as the first”. Capturing multiple image sequentially per exposure to obtain partial image equates to for i=1, ..., N, one by one. Furthermore, Wang in [0020] discloses about exposing to radiation, “Two contiguous CR plates contained in an elongated cassette are exposed to a radiographic image of an elongate object to produce a latent image stored in the CR plates”. Lastly, Wang in [0026] discloses, “Each screen captures only a portion of the image of the patient, as indicated by element 420 and 421 (FIG. 4C)”); for i=1, ..., N, determining, in the partial image (i), Mi pinpointing picture elements of a boundary image (i) of a boundary (i) of the radiation beam (i), wherein Mi is a positive integer (Wang in [0031] discloses, “The pixel values in the image region that is beyond the screen ending edge reflect the baseline noise level of the CR reader. This is because there is no signal contribution from the phosphor screen. Consequently, the pixel values in these regions are relatively low in comparison to those in the normally exposed image regions, therefore there is an abrupt pixel value decrement/discontinuity across the screen ending edge in the image ... computing all the significant edge transition pixels in the proximity of the screen ending edge location” wherein significant edge transition pixel equate to pinpointing picture elements); and stitching the partial images (i), i=1, ..., N resulting in a combined image based on the Mi (i=1, ..., N) pinpointing picture elements (Wang in [0025] discloses, “stitching the front and the back images together along the front screen ending edge based on the horizontal and vertical displacements”).
Summary of Citations (Wang)
Paragraph [0004]; “one end of the cassette is placed in the CR reader and the first phosphor screen is scanned and stored, the cassette is then removed from the reader and inverted to allow the second phosphor screen to be read in the same manner as the first”.
Paragraph [0020]; “Two contiguous CR plates contained in an elongated cassette are exposed to a radiographic image of an elongate object to produce a latent image stored in the CR plates”.
Paragraph [0025]; “stitching the front and the back images together along the front screen ending edge based on the horizontal and vertical displacements”.
Paragraph [0026]; “Each screen captures only a portion of the image of the patient, as indicated by element 420 and 421 (FIG. 4C)”.
Paragraph [0031]; “The pixel values in the image region that is beyond the screen ending edge reflect the baseline noise level of the CR reader. This is because there is no signal contribution from the phosphor screen. Consequently, the pixel values in these regions are relatively low in comparison to those in the normally exposed image regions, therefore there is an abrupt pixel value decrement/discontinuity across the screen ending edge in the image ... computing all the significant edge transition pixels in the proximity of the screen ending edge location”.
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 is similar in scope to claim 1, thus rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 17, apparatus claim 17 corresponds to method claim 1. Therefore, the rejection analysis and motivation to combine of claim 1 is applicable to claim 17.
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 2, 3, 7, 11, 12 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Wang in view of Sadi US Patent Application Publication No. US-20160088280-A1 (hereinafter Sadi).
Regarding claim 2, Wang discloses the method of claim 1.
Wang doesn’t disclose about the following limitation as further recited in the claim.
Sadi discloses for i=1, ..., N, the boundary image (i) is a closed line (Sadi in Fig. 5 discloses about closed line with boundary).
It would have been obvious to one with one having an ordinary skill in art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to integrate the technique of Sadi into the system of Wang because it would allow the system to have complete set of boundary reference points resulting in more precise alignment during image stitching.
Regarding claim 3, Wang discloses the method of claim 1.
Wang doesn’t disclose about the following limitation as further recited in the claim.
Sadi discloses for i=1, ..., N, the boundary image (i) is a rectangle (Sadi in Fig. 7 and [0077] discloses about closed line boundary rectangle images).
Summary of Citations (Sadi)
Paragraph [0077]; “The images illustrated in FIG. 7 may be captured using 2n side cameras 112 and top camera 112 T of camera system 110 similar to that illustrated in FIG. 6. In particular embodiments, n left cameras 112 and n right cameras 112 may be arranged in pairs and interleaved as described above so that left-camera images I-L 1 through I-Ln are overlapped and right-camera images I-R 1 through I-Rn are overlapped. In the example of FIG. 7, overlap areas 210 L represent overlapping portions of images of neighboring left cameras, and overlap areas 210 R represent overlapping portions of images of neighboring right cameras. As an example and not by way of limitation, neighboring left cameras 2 and 3 may capture images I-L 2 and I-L 3 , respectively, with corresponding overlap area 210 L2-3 . In the example of FIG. 7, image I-Top represents an image captured by top camera 112 T, and overlap area 210 T represents an outer edge portion of image I-Top that overlaps with upper portions of the images from side cameras 112 . In particular embodiments, overlap area 210 T may be used to stitch top image I-Top with images from one or more side cameras 112 .
Regarding claim 7, Wang discloses the method of claim 1.
Wang doesn’t disclose about the following limitation as further recited in the claim.
Sadi discloses for i=1, ..., N-1, a region (i) of the partial image (i) bounded by the boundary image (i) overlaps a region (i+1) of the partial image (i+1) bounded by the boundary image (i+1) (Sadi in Fig. 5 discloses boundary overlap region 210).
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 is similar in scope to claim 2, thus rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 is similar in scope to claim 3, thus rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 18, apparatus claim 18 corresponds to method claim 2. Therefore, the rejection analysis and motivation to combine of claim 2 is applicable to claim 18.
Claims 4 – 6, 8, 9, 13 – 15 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Wang in view of Qin Patent Application Publication No. CN-109064409-A (hereinafter Qin).
Regarding claim 4, Wang discloses the method of claim 1.
Wang doesn’t disclose about the following limitation as further recited in the claim.
Qin discloses for i=1, ..., N, the Mi pinpointing picture elements comprise a pinpointing picture element (i, 1), a pinpointing picture element (i, 2), a pinpointing picture element (i, 3), a pinpointing picture element (i, 4) (Qin in [Page – 3, Paragraph – 3] discloses, “Step 202: Calculate a perspective transformation matrix from at least four pairs of points corresponding to the matching point set”), and a pinpointing corner picture element (i) (Qin in [Page – 3, Paragraph – 4] discloses, “Step 203: The boundary line is obtained by the perspective transformation matrix, the feature point coordinates, and the geometric transformation”), and wherein for i=1, ..., N, the pinpointing corner picture element (i) is on both (A) a straight line going through the pinpointing picture element (i, 1) and the pinpointing picture element (i, 2), and (B) a straight line going through the pinpointing picture element (i, 3) and the pinpointing picture element (i, 4) (Qin in Fig. 4 discloses the claim limitation wherein (i, 1) is (A, A’) and (i, 2) is (P, P’) and (i, 3) is (B, B’) and (i, 4) is (Q, Q’)).
It would have been obvious to one with one having an ordinary skill in art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to integrate the technique of Qin into the system of Wang because it would improve the accuracy of locating the beam edges and corners in the captured image.
Summary of Citations (Qin)
[Page – 3, Paragraph – 3]; “Step 202: Calculate a perspective transformation matrix from at least four pairs of points corresponding to the matching point set”.
[Page – 3, Paragraph – 4]; “Step 203: The boundary line is obtained by the perspective transformation matrix, the feature point coordinates, and the geometric transformation”.
Regarding claim 5, Qin in the combination discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the method of claim 1, wherein for i=1, . . . , N, the boundary image (i) is not a closed line (Qin discloses in Fig. 4 about not closed line).
Regarding claim 6, Qin in the combination discloses the method of claim 1, wherein for i=1, . . . , N, intensity of radiation gradually falls when moving from inside the radiation beam (i) to outside the radiation beam (i) across the boundary (i) of the radiation beam (i) (Qin in [Page – 2, Last Paragraph] discloses, “The image smoothing uses the circumferential mapping pixels to form a coincident region of the fusion, so as to realize a smooth transition of the pixel from the coincident region to the non-coincident region, and finally obtain a seamless mosaic image frame”).
Summary of Citations (Qin)
[Page – 2, Last Paragraph]; “The image smoothing uses the circumferential mapping pixels to form a coincident region of the fusion, so as to realize a smooth transition of the pixel from the coincident region to the non-coincident region, and finally obtain a seamless mosaic image frame”.
Regarding claim 8, Qin in the combination discloses the method of claim 1, wherein for i=1, ..., N, values of picture elements of the partial image (i) outside the boundary image (i) as pinpointed by the Mi pinpointing picture elements are not used in determining values of picture elements of the combined image (Qin in [Page – 5, Paragraph – 2]; “adaptively find the boundary to obtain the exact polygon boundary, no unnecessary non-coincidence information is doped in the coincidence region; (2) the whole system extracts features only in the coincident region Point, improve the efficiency of feature extraction and the accuracy of matching”).
Summary of Citations (Qin)
[Page – 5, Paragraph – 2]; “adaptively find the boundary to obtain the exact polygon boundary, no unnecessary non-coincidence information is doped in the coincidence region; (2) the whole system extracts features only in the coincident region Point, improve the efficiency of feature extraction and the accuracy of matching”.
Regarding claim 9, Qin in the combination discloses the method of claim 1, wherein for i=1, ..., N, values of some picture elements of the partial image (i) outside the boundary image (i) as pinpointed by the Mi pinpointing picture elements are used in determining values of picture elements of the combined image (Qin in [Page – 2, Paragraph – 4] discloses, “The image smoothing module uses a circumferentially mapped pixel for the coincident region during fusion to achieve a smooth transition of the pixel from the coincident region to the non-coincident region, and finally obtain a seamless stitched image frame”).
Summary of Citations (Qin)
[Page – 2, Paragraph – 4]; “The image smoothing module uses a circumferentially mapped pixel for the coincident region during fusion to achieve a smooth transition of the pixel from the coincident region to the non-coincident region, and finally obtain a seamless stitched image frame”
Regarding claim 13, claim 13 is similar in scope to claim 4, thus rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 14, claim 14 is similar in scope to claim 5, thus rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 is similar in scope to claim 6, thus rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 19, apparatus claim 19 corresponds to method claim 6. Therefore, the rejection analysis and motivation to combine of claim 6 is applicable to claim 19.
Claims 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Wang in view of Ermes US Patent Application Publication No. US-20100172472-A1 and further in view of Qin.
Regarding claim 16, Wang discloses the method of claim 10.
Wang doesn’t disclose about the following limitation as further recited in the claim.
Ermes discloses exposing a second radiation detector to the radiation beam thereby causing the second radiation detector to capture a second beam image of the radiation beam (Ermes in [0014] discloses, ““acquiring a first image of the object using first radiation being emitted from a radiation source, being transmitted through the object and being detected by a radiation detector, ... acquiring a second image of the object using second radiation being emitted from the radiation source, being transmitted through the object and being detected by the radiation detector”).
It would have been obvious to one with one having an ordinary skill in art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to integrate the technique of Qin into the system of Ermes and Wang because it would allow the system to operate using multi-detector helps to improve image alignment.
Wang and Ermes in the combination doesn’t disclose about the following limitation as further recited in the claim.
Qin further discloses determining, in the second beam image, M2 pinpointing picture elements of a second boundary image of the boundary of the radiation beam, wherein M2 is a positive integer (Qin in [Page – 3, Paragraph 2 – 4 ] discloses, “Step 201: Divide the test block from the original image 1 and the original image 2, and then perform feature point extraction ... Step 202: Calculate a perspective transformation matrix from at least four pairs of points corresponding to the matching point set; Step 203: The boundary line is obtained by the perspective transformation matrix, the feature point coordinates, and the geometric transformation”).
It would have been obvious to one with one having an ordinary skill in art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to integrate the technique of Qin into the system of Ermes and Wang because it would allow the system to use the boundary reference point to output accurate and reliable stitched partial images.
Regarding claim 20, apparatus claim 20 corresponds to method claim 16. Therefore, the rejection analysis and motivation to combine of claim 16 is applicable to claim 20.
Conclusion
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/ZAID MUHAMMAD SALEH/
Examiner, Art Unit 2668
05/23/2026
/VU LE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2668
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