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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on April 22, 2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed April 22, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding claim 1,
(1) applicant states that “Tahmasebi, on the other hand, applies PCA in a fundamentally different context, namely to model deformation of a single continuous anatomical structure across different states for the purpose of image registration. The PCA in Tahmasebi is specifically used to capture intra-object deformation modes, not variability across independent samples. In view of these differences, a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have been motivated to extract the PCA teaching from Tahmasebi and apply it to Scheider.”. Examiner disagrees with this statement. Scheider teaches quantifying manufacturing dispersion from multiple independent parts of a same batch. Tahmasebi teaches constructing of a dataset of displacement fields representing geometric variations across different deformation states of a body structure and applying a dimensionality reduction (PCA) to this dataset in order to extract eigenmodes representative of the statistical variability. It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have modified Schneider to incorporate the teachings of Tahmasebi to utilize dimensionality reduction method of the displacement fields and a statistical analysis of the fields expressed according to the eigenmodes in order to implement a displacement model to characterize multiple independent parts of a same batch.
Response to Amendment
The Amendment of April 22, 2026 overcomes the following objection:
Objection of claim 15 because of ambiguity.
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, 5-7 and 9-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schneider (Chinese Patent Publication No.: CN 106233126 A), hereinafter Schneider, in view of Tahmasebi (PCT Patent Publication No.: WO 2013/136278 A1), hereinafter Tahmasebi, further in view of Berges (Study and implementation conditions of the multivariate outlier detection methods for screening of potential field failures, 2015 IEEE 22nd International Symposium on the Physical and Failure Analysis of Integrated Circuits), hereinafter Berges.
Regarding claim 1, Schneider teaches a method, implemented by a computer system, for quantifying geometric manufacturing dispersion of parts (said correlation step (200) is included in a predetermined set of X-ray tomography image of transformation (30) searching (40) minimizes the difference (50) between the image and the reference to characterizing (300, 350) of the part (10). Abstract), the method comprising:
- processing a plurality of X-ray tomography volume images each associated with a part (The invention relates to a method for characterizing a component (10), comprising obtaining the parts of the X-ray tomography image. Abstract. information contained in X-ray tomography image is useful, because it relates to the entire volume parts, and only near its microstructure, and close the defect. Page 2 2nd paragraph), (followed by the step of the image associated with the reference (20) to step(200), wherein: said correlation step (200) is included in a predetermined set of X-ray tomography image of transformation (30) searching (40) minimizes the difference (50) between the image and the reference to characterizing (300, 350) of the part (10). Abstract), including:
- a step of correlating volume images to obtain a displacement field between each image and the reference image, to obtain a plurality of displacement fields minimizing a difference between the volume images (followed by the step of the image associated with the reference (20) to step(200), wherein: said correlation step (200) is included in a predetermined set of X-ray tomography image of transformation (30) searching (40) minimizes the difference (50) between the image and the reference to characterizing (300, 350) of the part (10). Abstract).
Schneider does not teach the following limitations as further recited, but Tahmasebi further teaches
- a processing by dimensionality reduction method of the plurality of the image displacement fields to express them according to eigenmodes (for the landmark positions of one deformed state and performing registration between the landmark positions of other deformation state to generate deformation field (i.e., displacement fields). using, for example, principal component analysis (i.e., dimensionality reduction method), based on the deformation field to calculate an average deformation and the deformation mode eigenvectors. Page 7 13th paragraph), [[and]]
- a statistical analysis (This invention relates to the field of medical imaging, and more particularly, to a distortion modelling for using statistical and sparse deformation data automatic multimode deformable registration method, system and computer program product. [0001]) of the fields expressed according to the eigenmodes (Then, according to the deformation field computing for a plurality of target average deformation and the deformation mode eigenvectors. [0010]).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Schneider to incorporate the teachings of Tahmasebi to utilize dimensionality reduction method of the plurality of the image displacement fields to express them according to eigenmodes and a statistical analysis of the fields expressed according to the eigenmodes in order to implement a displacement model to characterize multiple independent parts of a same batch.
The combination of Schneider and Tahmasebi does not teach the following limitations as further recited, but Berges further teaches quantifying geometric manufacturing dispersion (Study and implementation conditions of the multivariate outlier detection methods for screening of potential field failures. Title) between parts (A file is constituted by about 13000 parts taken from around twenty wafers: the test results where data were missing have been removed. The failed part returned by the customer is present in the file generated from the test results of the parts. Page 168 right column 5th paragraph) of a same series of parts (A case study is about an automotive driver part for which univariate methods failed to detect abnormality on a customer return. Page 168 right column 5th paragraph); - determining whether a part is acceptable or not (A PCA was run on the test result file for the automotive driver component in the case study (Fig. 6). A study on the variance explained by the PCA showed that nearly half of the variables were needed to explain all the variability. Unfortunately, computation of the same Mahalanobis distance in that space reduced by PCA as in the full-size space, showed that a higher rejection rate was necessary to detect the same customer return: the 1% rate was even exceeded. Page 170 right column last paragraph.
PNG
media_image1.png
876
1048
media_image1.png
Greyscale
), based on said statistical analysis (The PCA models the variation of the variables in a set of independent linear combinations (principal components) of those variables. This set of variables is chosen in such a way that they capture as much of the original variability as possible. The used distance was made explicit earlier in the paper: it uses the variance inverse matrix. Page 170 right column last paragraph).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of Berges to quantify geometric manufacturing dispersion between parts of a same series of parts and determine whether a part is acceptable or not based on statistical analysis in order to increase reliability in potential failure screening, with a multivariate approach, when all the dispersion results are addressed simultaneously.
Claims 3, 5-7 and 9-13, unamended and are rejected based on the revised combination of Schneider, in view of Tahmasebi, further in view of Berges as applied to claim 1 above. The grounds of rejection established in the last Office Action is fully incorporated herein.
Apparatus claim 14 is drawn to the apparatus corresponding to the method of using same as claimed in claim 1. Therefore apparatus claim 14 corresponds to method claim 1, and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used above.
Claim 15 is drawn to a non-transitory computer-readable medium including instructions for the execution of the steps of a processing method according to claim 1, when said program is executed by a computer. Therefore, claim 15 corresponds to method claim 1, and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used above.
Claims 2 and 4, unamended and are rejected based on the revised combination of Schneider (Chinese Patent Publication No.: CN 106233126 A), hereinafter Schneider, in view of Tahmasebi (PCT Patent Publication No.: WO 2013/136278 A1), hereinafter Tahmasebi, further in view of Berges as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Jolliffe (Principal component analysis: a review and recent developments, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 374: 20150202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2015.0202), hereinafter Jolliffe. The ground of rejection established in the last Office Action is fully incorporated herein.
Claim 8, unamended and is rejected based on the revised combination of Schneider (Chinese Patent Publication No.: CN 106233126 A), hereinafter Schneider, in view of Tahmasebi (PCT Patent Publication No.: WO 2013/136278 A1), hereinafter Tahmasebi, further in view of Berges as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Zhao (Multimode analysis and online monitoring for injection molding processes, 2017 29th Chinese Control And Decision Conference (CCDC) (2017, Page(s): 3451-3456), hereinafter Zhao. The ground of rejection established in the last Office Action is fully incorporated herein.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LEI ZHAO whose telephone number is (703)756-1922. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm.
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 http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, VU LE can be reached at (571)272-7332. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/LEI ZHAO/Examiner, Art Unit 2668
/VU LE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2668
Prosecution Insights