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 .
Notice to Applicants
This communication is in response to the Application filed on 6/7/2023.
Claims 1-9 and 21-24 are pending. Claims 12-16 and 18-19 are withdrawn from consideration. Claims 10-11, 17 and 20 are canceled.
Applicant’s election without traverse of Invention I (claims 1-9) in the reply filed on 12/29/2025 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 8/31/2023 and 5/29/2025 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 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 1-2, 9, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US 8,184,765 to Akahori.
Regarding claim 1, Akahori discloses a method for image processing (Figures 7 and 12, for example), implemented on a computing device having at least one processor and at least one storage device (Figure 1), the method comprising: obtaining original projection data of a target subject (Figure 2, col. 5 line 61 to col. 6 line 13); for each of at least one slice location of the target subject, generating a plurality of candidate slice images of the slice location based on a plurality of distance-weight relationships and the original projection data (col. 6 lines 49 to col. 7 line 15), each of the plurality of distance-weight relationships indicating a weight of a portion of the original projection data acquired by a radiation source and a distance from the radiation source to the slice location when acquiring the portion of the original projection data (Figure 12, col. 13 lines 3-26); and generating at least one target medical image of the target subject based on the plurality of candidate slice images of each of the at least one slice location (col. 13 lines 27-50).
Regarding claim 2, Akahori discloses wherein the plurality of distance-weight relationships of a slice location are generated by: determining an initial distance-weight relationship corresponding to the slice location (Fig. 2); and determining the plurality of distance-weight relationships by translating the initial distance-weight relationship (Fig. 12, ST12-St14, col. 13 lines 16-26).
With regard to claim 9, claim 9 is rejected same as claim 1 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 1 are equally applicable to claim 9. Akahori discloses a system as shown in Fig. 1, and all of the other limitations similar to claim 1 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
With regard to claim 21, claim 21 is rejected same as claim 2 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 2 are equally applicable to claim 21, and all of the other limitations similar to claim 2 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
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 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 of this title, 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 3-5 and 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 8,184,765 to Akahori in combination with Chen et al. (“Chen, Mingqing, et al. "Motion-compensated mega-voltage cone beam CT using the deformation derived directly from 2D projection images.” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 32.8 (2012): 1365-1375.) (hereafter, “Chen”).
With regard to claim 3, Akahori teaches the initial distance-weight relationship corresponding to the slice location is determined. However, Akahori does not expressly teach wherein the initial distance-weight relationship corresponding to the slice location is determined based on at least one of feature information of the slice location or a moving speed of the radiation source with respect to the target subject.
Chen teaches wherein the initial distance-weight relationship corresponding to the slice location is determined based on at least one of feature information of the slice location or a moving speed of the radiation source with respect to the target subject (page 1365 right column last paragraph where motion area id disclosed; page 1366 right column, advantages 1 and 2).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akahori’s reference to have feature information of the slice location of Chen’s reference. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to have a much lighter computational load and makes it robust in the presence of confounding organs in the projection image, as suggested by Chen on page 1366. Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Chen with Akahori to obtain the invention as specified in claim 3.
With regard to claim 4, Akahori in combination with Chen teaches wherein the translating the initial distance-weight relationship includes: determining motion information of the target subject during the acquisition of the original projection data; and translating the initial distance-weight relationship based on the motion information (Chen: page 1368 left column, first full paragraph, page 1369 left column, first full paragraph and second to last full paragraph; Figure 6(d)).
With regard to claim 5, Akahori in combination with Chen teaches wherein the generating at least one target medical image of the target subject based on the plurality of candidate slice images of each of the at least one slice location includes: for each of the at least one slice location, determining a target slice image from the plurality of candidate slice images of the slice location (Akahori: col. 2 lines 59-67); and generating a target 3D image of the target subject based on the target slice image of each of the at least one slice location (Chen: Introduction section right column on page 1365, page 1369 TPS Interpolation and Figs. 9 and 10).
With regard to claim 22, claim 22 is rejected same as claim 5 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 5 are equally applicable to claim 22, and all of the other limitations similar to claim 5 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-8 and 23-24 are 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHEFALI D. GORADIA whose telephone number is (571)272-8958. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8AM-6PM, Friday 8AM-12PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Henok Shiferaw can be reached at 571-272-4637. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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SHEFALI D. GORADIA
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2676
/SHEFALI D GORADIA/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2676