DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Oath/Declaration
2. The receipt of Oath/Declaration is acknowledged.
Preliminary Amendment
3. The Preliminary Amendment submitted on 07/12/2023 containing amendments to the specification and amendments to the claims are acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
4. The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 07/12/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
5. The drawing(s) filed on 07/12/2023 are accepted by the Examiner.
Status of Claims
6. Claims 1-3 are pending in this application.
Claims 1 and 3 were amended in the 07/12/2023 Preliminary Amendment.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
7. 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.
8. 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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
9. The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
10. Claims 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as being anticipated by
Kakinuma et al. (WO 2019/225692).
The examiner has attached an English translation of Kakinuma et al. to the Office Action.
Regarding Claim 1:
Kakinuma discloses a video processing device (Kakinuma: Fig. 4 ‘Video Processing Apparatus’ [0040]) comprising:
a processor (Kakinuma: Fig. 4 ‘image processing unit 100’ [0040-0041]); and
a memory device storing instructions (Kakinuma: e.g. ‘a video processing program that causes a computer to function as each functional unit’ [0015; 0083])
that, when executed by the processor, configure the processor to:
determine whether a pixel of an input image is a foreground or a background (Kakinuma: ‘identifying the foreground and the background’ [0003]; ‘In an embodiment of the present invention...a combination of colors of pixels of the input image and the background image is learned, and the foreground likelihood of each pixel is estimated.’ [0019]); and
determine, for a target pixel on which a foreground and a background have been switched, whether switching between the foreground and the background is a color change in the foreground or in the background by using a lookup table capable of determining whether switching is in the foreground or in the background from a temporal change of a pixel value (Kakinuma: ‘In an embodiment of the present invention, a neural network (NN) that can be estimated after conversion of a feature space is performed so that accurate identification can be performed even when a feature vector is close, a combination of colors of pixels of the input image and the background image is learned, and the foreground likelihood of each pixel is estimated. Furthermore, by replacing the arithmetic processing of the constructed NN with the look-up table (LUT) reference processing, it is possible to perform high-speed processing while precisely correcting the boundary of the subject by sparsely searching a peripheral pixel close to the color of the target pixel and re-identifying whether the pixel is the foreground or the background one by one, while enabling real-time processing on the moving image. ‘ [0019]), and
correct a result of determination as to whether it is the foreground or the background that has been performed for the target pixel in a case where the switching between the foreground and the background is the color change in the foreground or in the background
(Kakinuma: ‘the boundary correction unit 121 May classify the foreground likelihood estimated by the foreground region estimation unit 103 into an unclassified region including a foreground, a background, a foreground, and a background boundary pixel, classify the unclassified region into two or more types of correction target regions in accordance with features near the boundary pixel, and change the correction method for each correction target region. This makes it possible to obtain an extracted image suitable for the feature of the boundary.’ [0075]; ‘In addition, there is no need to provide one type of LUT to be referred to in the extraction processing to be described later, and a plurality of LUTs different for each region of an image may be referred to. Accordingly, for example, in a case where there is a region (a region of the ground in the lower portion of the image) in which the color change of the background pixel is small in the scene and a region where the color change of the background pixel is large (an empty region in the upper portion of the image), the lower region of the image is divided so as to refer to the LUT of the result obtained by learning the LUT of the result obtained by learning with the feature vector of the six-dimensional 32 gradation, and the upper region of the image is learned by the feature vector of the three-dimensional 128 gradation, so that the identification result matching the feature of the scene can be obtained.’ [0030])
Regarding Claim 2: (drawn to a method)
The proposed rejection of device claim 1, over Kakinuma et al. is similarly cited to reject the steps of the method of claim 2 because these steps occur in the operation of the device as discussed above. Thus, the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 1 are equally applicable to claim 2.
Regarding Claim 3: (drawn to a computer-readable storage medium)
The proposed rejection of device claim 1, and method claim 2, over Kakinuma et al. is similarly cited to reject the computer readable medium of claim 3 because these steps occur in the operation of the device and method as discussed above. Thus, the arguments similar to that presented above for claims 1 and 2 are equally applicable to claim 3.
It is noted that Kakinuma et al. discloses a computer-readable storage medium at least at ¶ [0015; 0083].
Conclusion
11. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Tsuchikawa et al. (US 5,748,775) discloses a moving object extraction based on background subtraction capable of stably extracting the moving object under various environments. Temporal changes of image feature parameter values for sub-regions subdividing a frame of each input image are stored, and the background image is reconstructed by statistically processing a temporal change of the image feature parameter values for each sub-region within a prescribed target region of the frame over a prescribed period of time to obtain the statistical quantity characterizing that temporal change, judging whether that temporal change is due to an illumination change or not according to the obtained statistical quantity and a prescribed illumination change judging condition, and updating a background image value for each sub-region by a new background image value according to the image feature parameter values for each sub-region during the prescribed period of time. Then, a subtraction processing is applied to one of the input images and the reconstructed background image, and a binarization processing is applied to the obtained subtraction image so as to extract the moving object region from the input images.
12. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NEIL R MCLEAN whose telephone number is (571)270-1679. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday, 6AM - 4PM, PST.
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, Akwasi M Sarpong can be reached at 571.270.3438. 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.
/NEIL R MCLEAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681