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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. When reviewing independent claim 1, and based upon consideration of all of the relevant factors with respect to the claim as a whole, claim(s) * are held to claim an abstract idea without reciting elements that amount to significantly more than the abstract idea and is/are therefore rejected as ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101. The Examiner will analyze Claim 1, and similar rationale applies to independent Claim/s 2-10. The rationale, under MPEP § 2106, for this finding is explained below:
The claimed invention (1) must be directed to one of the four statutory categories, and (2) must not be wholly directed to subject matter encompassing a judicially recognized exception, as defined below. The following two step analysis is used to evaluate these criteria.
Step 1: Is the claim directed to one of the four patent-eligible subject matter categories: process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter?
When examining the claim under 35 U.S.C. 101, the Examiner interprets that the claims is directed to a method.
Step 2a, Prong 1: Does the claim wholly embrace a judicially recognized exception, which includes laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas, or is it a particular practical application of a judicial exception?
The Examiner interprets that the judicial exception applies since Claim 1 limitation of ( matching a coordinate system, segmenting teeth, matching ) is/are directed to an abstract idea. The claim is related to mathematical concept. If the claim recites a judicial exception (i.e., an abstract idea enumerated in MPEP § 2106.04(a), a law of nature, or a natural phenomenon), the claim requires further analysis in Prong Two.
Step 2a, Prong 2: Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application?
The Examiner interprets that Claim 1 limitation does not provide additional elements or combination of additional elements to a practical application See, MPEP §2106.04(a), Because a judicial exception is not eligible subject matter, Bilski, 561 U.S. at 601, 95 USPQ2d at 1005-06 (quoting Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. at 309, 206 USPQ at 197 (1980)), if there are no additional claim elements besides the judicial exception, or if the additional claim elements merely recite another judicial exception, that is insufficient to integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. See, e.g., RecogniCorp, LLC v. Nintendo Co., 855 F.3d 1322, 1327, 122 USPQ2d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2017) ("Adding one abstract idea (math) to another abstract idea (encoding and decoding) does not render the claim non-abstract"). OR Genetic Techs. v. Merial LLC, 818 F.3d 1369, 1376, 118 USPQ2d 1541, 1546 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (eligibility "cannot be furnished by the unpatentable law of nature (or natural phenomenon or abstract idea) itself."). For a claim reciting a judicial exception to be eligible, the additional elements (if any) in the claim must "transform the nature of the claim" into a patent-eligible application of the judicial exception, Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 217, 110 USPQ2d at 1981, either at Prong Two or in Step 2B. If there are no additional elements in the claim, then it cannot be eligible. In such a case, after making the appropriate rejection (see MPEP § 2106.07 for more information on formulating a rejection for lack of eligibility), it is a best practice for the examiner to recommend an amendment, if possible, that would resolve eligibility of the claim.
Step 2b: If a judicial exception into a practical application is not recited in the claim, the Examiner must interpret if the claim recites additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
The Examiner interprets that the Claims do not amount to significantly more .Furthermore, the generic computer components of the computer recited as performing generic computer functions that are well-understood, routine and conventional activities amount to no more than implementing the abstract idea with a computerized system.
Claims 2-10 depending on the independent claim/s include all the limitation of the independent claim. The Examiner finds that Claim 1 does not states significantly more .
Thus, Claims 1 recite the same abstract idea and therefore are not drawn to the eligible subject matter as they are directed to the abstract idea without significantly more.
Therefore, the Examiner interprets that the claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim(s) 1-5,8-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jang et al (Fully automatic integration of dental CBCT images and full-arch intraoral impressions with stitching error correction via individual tooth segmentation and identification) in view of Cheol et al (KR 20200120036)
As to claim 1, Jang et al teaches the method of matching intraoral scan data, comprising: matching a coordinate system of three-dimensional (3D) intraoral scan data to a coordinate system of a 3D intraoral computed tomography (CT) image ((pg. 4, col.i equation 16 shows the determination of a transform matching x, i.e. the scan data, and y, the CT data. Furthermore, pg. 5, col. 2 par. 2 “in the stitching process of locally scanned images” where scanned images are the scan data key frames. Therefore the scan data is composed of the scan key frames data and matching the scan data to the CT data also match the scan key frames to the CT data) using 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral scan data and 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral CT image (pg. 4, col. 1, "the initial transformation is determined by” and equation 11 where the equation depends on Corr’, a set of pairs of 3D points having similar features, i.e. the 3D feature points, also pg. 5 fig. 4 shows the matching of feature points between scan data and CT data);
segmenting teeth in the 3D intraoral scan data on the basis of the 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral scan data and generating surface information about the segmented teeth( pg. 3, col. 1, par. 1 "B. Individual Tooth Segmentation and Identification in CBCT" and “As shown in Fig. 2b, we obtain the teeth point cloud Y that consists of individual tooth point clouds,” where the point cloud Y is the 3D coordinate information generated from the CT image).
While Jang teaches the limitation above, Jang fails to teach “matching the 3D intraoral scan data and the 3D intraoral CT image, whose coordinate systems have been matched, using the surface information”. However, Cheol et al teaches a generation step of generating a plurality of reference points spaced apart from each other in an oral scan image and a computed tomography (CT) image of an object to be matched; and a step of matching the oral scan image and the CT image of the object to be matched by using a reference point (first reference point i.e surface) of the oral scan image and a reference point (second reference point) of the CT image. The first and second reference points include a reference point for one frontmost tooth of an anterior tooth region, and a reference point for two teeth on both sides of the posterior most region of a posterior tooth region. The first reference point is derived from an object which has a simplified shape of a tooth(abstract, figure 8). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before filing of the claimed invention to use the use the surface information in order to provide reduced errors in generating a dental 3D surface mesh. Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
As to claim 2, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising determining the 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral scan data (pg. 4, col. 1, "the initial transformation is determined by” and equation 11 where the equation depends on Corr’, a set of pairs of 3D points having similar features, i.e. the 3D feature points, also pg. 5 fig. 4 shows the matching of feature points between scan data and CT data).
As to claim 3, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 2, wherein the determining of the 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral scan data includes: performing rendering on the 3D intraoral scan data and generating two-dimensional (2D) intraoral scan data; determining 2D feature points of the 2D intraoral scan data ( figure A.7.b and A.7.c) ; and projecting the 2D feature points of the 2D intraoral scan data onto the 3D intraoral scan data and determining the 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral scan data (TSIMIOS using 2D tooth feature-highlighted images, which are generated by orthographic projection of the IOS data. This approach allows high-dimensional 3D surface models to efficiently segment individual teeth using low-dimensional 2D image; section 1 introduction).
As to claim 4, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the determining of the 2D feature points of the 2D intraoral scan data includes: applying deep learning to the 2D intraoral scan data and generating a 2D heatmap representing adjacent points between teeth in the 2D intraoral scan data; and determining the 2D feature points of the 2D intraoral scan data using the 2D heatmap.
As to claim 5, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising determining the 3D feature points of the 3D intraoral CT image( s and the measurement unit of these points is millimeter. Dental CBCT images are isotropic voxel structures consisting of sequences of 2D cross-sectional images, and are saved in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format, section 2 method).
As to claim 8, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the generating of the surface information about the segmented teeth includes generating the surface information about the segmented teeth by segmenting the teeth from the 3D intraoral scan data through a harmonic function in which the 3D feature points of the 3D scan data are used as a boundary condition( The vector-valued function ℏ is used to increase the ability to discriminate differences between different local geometric features. Then, FPFH(x) is defined as weighted sum of SPFH(x ′ ) over 𝑁𝑁𝑘 (x): FPFH(x) = SPFH(x) + 1 𝑘 ∑ x ′∈𝑁𝑁𝑘 (x)⧵{x} SPFH(x ′ ) 1 + ‖x − x ′‖ . (B.12) Here, the weight 1∕(1 + ‖x − x ′‖) depends on the center point, page 9 left column).
As to claim 9, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 8, wherein the harmonic function is a function that gives weights to concave points of the 3D scan data (Fig A.8a).
As to claim 10, Jang et al teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: acquiring the 3D intraoral scan data from an intraoral scanner (Each IOS model is scanned by one of two intraoral scanners, experiment and result page 4); and acquiring the 3D intraoral CT image from CT equipment (CBCT, figure 1) .
The limitation of claim 11-16 has been addressed above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 6-7 objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Contact information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NANCY BITAR whose telephone number is (571)270-1041. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Friday from 8:00 am to 5:00 p.m..
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NANCY . BITAR
Examiner
Art Unit 2664
/NANCY BITAR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2664