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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Status of the Claims
Claims 1-20 are pending and the subject of this NON-FINAL Office Action. This is the first action on the merits.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election with traverse of Group I (claims 1-19) in the reply filed on 08/14/2025 is acknowledged. However, due to Applicants’ amendment to claim 20, the restriction is withdrawn. All claims are examined.
Priority
Applicants receive a priority date of 12/21/2023 because they have not filed an English-language translation of ither priority document PCT/CN2022/107529 or CN202110832043; yet, claim CIP status to the PCT priority document; however, intervening art, below, teaches the claimed invention. See MPEP § 216.
Applicant cannot rely upon a certified copy of the foreign priority application to overcome this rejection because a translation of said application has not been made of record in accordance with 37 CFR 1.55. When an English language translation of a non-English language foreign application is required, the translation must be that of the certified copy (of the foreign application as filed) submitted together with a statement that the translation of the certified copy is accurate. See MPEP §§ 215 and 216.
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) A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(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; or
(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.
Claims 1-18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by CN113469918B (published 01/10/2021, filed 07/22/2021).
As to claim 1, CN113469918B teaches a method for calibrating an exposure surface of an optical system, comprising:
performing flat-field correction on a photographing module by using a reference light source (Abstract; claim 1);
acquiring a grayscale distribution image generated by photographing an exposure surface of an optical system by the photographing module (Abstract; claim 1);
segmenting the grayscale distribution image into a mesh image comprising a plurality of segmented regions, and calculating a fitting grayscale value of each segmented region (Abstract; claim 1);
selecting, as a reference grayscale value, a predetermined fitting grayscale value from all the fitting grayscale values obtained through calculation, and calculating, according to the reference grayscale value, grayscale compensation coefficients corresponding to the other segmented regions, so as to generate a digital mask (Abstract; claim 1); and
performing mask compensation, by using the digital mask, on a light projection image emitted by the optical system, so as to obtain a printed image of which the exposure surface has a uniform irradiance value (Abstract; claim 1).
As to claim 2, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 1, wherein selecting, as the reference grayscale value, the predetermined fitting grayscale value from all the fitting grayscale values obtained through calculation comprises: selecting, as the reference grayscale value, a minimum fitting grayscale value from all the fitting grayscale values obtained through calculation (claims 1 and 7).
As to claim 3, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 2, wherein
acquiring the grayscale distribution image generated by photographing the exposure surface of the optical system by the photographing module comprises:
acquiring a first grayscale distribution image and a second grayscale distribution image, wherein the first grayscale distribution image is obtained by photographing a first image that is projected by the optical system, the second grayscale distribution image is obtained by photographing a second image that is projected by the optical system, a first grayscale region in the first image corresponds to a second grayscale region in the second image, and a second grayscale region in the first image corresponds to a first grayscale region in the second image; and
processing the first grayscale distribution image and the second grayscale distribution image, so as to obtain the grayscale distribution image (claim 3).
As to claim 4, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 3, wherein the first grayscale region in the first image and the second grayscale region in the first image are arranged at intervals; the first grayscale region in the second image and the second grayscale region in the second image are arranged at intervals; the first grayscale region in the first image is circular or square; and the first grayscale region in the second image is circular or square (claim 6).
As to claim 5, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 4, wherein the first grayscale region is a white region, and the second grayscale region is a black region (“In this embodiment, the light guide film is used to receive the image of the full-width white image projected or displayed by the optical system, i.e. the projected image, on the exposure surface, and 255 full-scale Bai Tu of 0-255 gray scales is used, and the imaging surface of the full-width white image is visible from the back surface of the light guide film, i.e. the printing surface of the printer.”).
As to claim 6, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 2, wherein a lens of the photographing module is provided with an optical filter (optical system; claim 1).
As to claim 7, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 1, wherein performing flat-field correction on the photographing module by using the reference light source comprises:
projecting, by the reference light source, an exposure surface having a uniform irradiance value;
photographing the exposure surface of the reference light source by the photographing module, so as to obtain a reference light source image;
acquiring a grayscale output value of each pixel unit in a photosensitive chip according to the reference light source image, and comparing a preset grayscale value of the reference light source with the grayscale output value of each pixel unit, so as to obtain a grayscale correction coefficient of each pixel unit; and
performing the flat-field correction on the photographing module according to the grayscale correction coefficient of each pixel unit (claim 2).
As to claim 8, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the projecting, by the reference light source, an exposure surface having a uniform irradiance value comprising: projecting, by the reference light source, several exposure surfaces having a uniform irradiance value;
the photographing the exposure surface of the reference light source by the photographing module, so as to obtain a reference light source image comprising:
photographing each exposure surface of the several exposure surfaces by the photographing module, so as to obtain several exposure surface images, wherein a first grayscale region of each exposure surface corresponds to a second grayscale region, overlapped to the first grayscale region, of remaining exposure surfaces;
processing the several exposure surface images to obtain the reference light source image (claim 2).
As to claim 9, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 7, wherein photographing the exposure surface of the reference light source by the photographing module, so as to obtain a reference light source image comprises:
dividing an image-taking surface of the photographing module into several image-taking sub-regions on the basis of a size of the exposure surface of the reference light source;
moving the reference light source, and respectively projecting to the image-taking sub-regions by the reference light source, so as to obtain several reference light source sub-images with each reference light source sub-image corresponding to each image-taking sub-region; and
splicing the several reference light source sub-images, so as to obtain the reference light source image (claim 3).
As to claim 10, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:
limiting an exposure of the photographing module;
adjusting an irradiance value of an exposure surface of the reference light source, and acquiring a corresponding grayscale value by using the photographing module, so as to generate a relationship curve between grayscale and the irradiance value by fitting; and
on the basis of the relationship curve, performing grayscale reading, by using the photographing module, on the light projection image emitted by the optical system, so as to obtain a corresponding irradiance value (claim 4).
As to claim 11, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 10, wherein the adjusting an irradiance value of an exposure surface of the reference light source, and acquiring a corresponding grayscale value by using the photographing module, so as to generate a relationship curve between grayscale and the irradiance value by fitting comprising:
adjusting the irradiance value of the exposure surface of the reference light source, wherein the reference light source is exposed based on a spectral wavelength curve;
photographing the exposure surface by the photographing module, so as to obtain a corresponding gray value, wherein the gray value is obtained based on the spectral wavelength curve and a photoelectric response function of the photographing module;
obtaining the relationship curve between the gray value and the irradiance value by fitting based on the irradiance value and the corresponding gray value (claim 4).
As to claim 12, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:
acquiring an irradiation control parameter and corresponding image information of the optical system;
acquiring a first relationship between the image information and irradiation data of the optical system; and
obtaining a second relationship between the irradiation control parameter and the irradiation data of the optical system on the basis of the first relationship, the irradiation control parameter, and the corresponding image information, wherein the second relationship is configured to adjust the irradiation data during 3D printing (Claim 4; Fig. 7).
As to claim 13, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 12, wherein acquiring the first relationship between the image information of the optical system and the irradiation data comprises:
acquiring a third relationship between image information of the reference light source and the image information of the optical system, and a fourth relationship between the image information of the reference light source and irradiation data of the reference light source; and
obtaining the first relationship at least on the basis of the third relationship and the fourth relationship, wherein
the third relationship meets the image information of the reference light source being consistent with or deviating from the image information of the optical system (claim 7; Fig. 7).
As to claim 14, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 1, wherein acquiring the grayscale distribution image generated by photographing the exposure surface of the optical system by the photographing module comprises:
adjusting the exposure of the photographing module, so as to cause a grayscale value of the grayscale distribution image obtained through photographing to be below a maximum grayscale value (claim 5).
As to claim 15, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 1, wherein a fitting algorithm is used to calculate the fitting grayscale value of each segmented region;
and the fitting algorithm is a least square method, a polynomial fitting algorithm, or a cubic spline fitting algorithm (claim 6).
As to claim 16, CN113469918B teaches the method for calibrating the exposure surface of the optical system as claimed in claim 2, wherein selecting, as the reference grayscale value, the minimum fitting grayscale value from all the fitting grayscale values obtained through calculation, and calculating, according to the reference grayscale value, the grayscale compensation coefficients corresponding to the other segmented regions, so as to generate the digital mask comprises:
successively labeling all the fitting grayscale values as P11, P12, . . . , Pmn according to a sequence of corresponding segmented regions, so as to obtain a grayscale array of
PNG
media_image1.png
70
384
media_image1.png
Greyscale
;
selecting, as the minimum fitting grayscale value, a minimum value Pmin from the grayscale array, and performing normalized ratio calculation on the minimum fitting grayscale value and other data in the grayscale array, so as to obtain a ratio matrix; and
using ratios comprised in the ratio matrix as the corresponding grayscale compensation coefficients, and then multiplying a required image grayscale value and the ratios in the ratio matrix, so as to obtain the corresponding digital mask (claim 7).
As to claim 17, CN113469918B teaches a calibration measurement method for 3D printing, comprising:
calibrating an optical system (claim 1);
detecting a size of an exposure surface of the optical system (claim 3);
wherein calibrating an optical system comprises:
performing flat-field correction on a photographing module by using a reference light source (claim 1);
acquiring a grayscale distribution image generated by photographing an exposure surface of an optical system by the photographing module (claim 1);
segmenting the grayscale distribution image into a mesh image comprising a plurality of segmented regions, and calculating a fitting grayscale value of each segmented region (claim 1);
selecting, as a reference grayscale value, a predetermined fitting grayscale value from all the fitting grayscale values obtained through calculation, and calculating, according to the reference grayscale value, grayscale compensation coefficients corresponding to the other segmented regions, so as to generate a digital mask (claim 1); and
performing mask compensation, by using the digital mask, on a light projection image emitted by the optical system, so as to obtain a printed image of which the exposure surface has a uniform irradiance value (claim 1).
As to claim 18, CN113469918B teaches the calibration measurement method for 3D printing as claimed in claim 17, wherein
detecting the size of an exposure surface of the optical system: calibrating a size corresponding to each pixel on a photographing surface in a camera module, and determining a size of a photographed object according to the number of the pixels that are occupied by a side length of the photographed object; and/or, acquiring a size of the photographing surface in the camera module, and determining the size of the photographed object according to a ratio of the photographing surface occupied by a side length of the photographed object (claim 3).
As to claim 20, CN113469918B teaches system for calibrating an exposure surface of an optical system comprising (claims 1, 8 & 10):
the optical system, comprising the exposure surface;
a photographing module, configured to acquire a grayscale distribution image of the exposure surface (claims 1, 8 & 10);
a reference light source, configured to perform flat-field correction on the photographing module (claims 1, 8 & 10);
a processor, configured to implement:
segmenting the grayscale distribution image into a mesh image comprising a plurality of segmented regions, and calculating a fitting grayscale value of each segmented region (claims 1 & 8);
selecting, as a reference grayscale value, a predetermined fitting grayscale value from all the fitting grayscale values obtained through calculation, and calculating, according to the reference grayscale value, grayscale compensation coefficients corresponding to the other segmented regions, so as to generate a digital mask (claims 1 & 8); and
performing mask compensation, by using the digital mask, on a light projection image emitted by the optical system, so as to obtain a printed image of which the exposure surface has a uniform irradiance value (claims 1 & 8).
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.
Claim(s) 18-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CN113469918B (published 01/10/2021, filed 07/22/2021), in view of HENDRIK (US 20160221267 A1)
It would have been prima facie obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to apply familiar transfer modulation function (MFT) to familiar images to achieve familiar clarity with a reasonable expectation of success.
As to claim 17, CN113469918B teaches the elements of this claim as explained above.
CN113469918B does not explicitly teach detecting the clarity of the optical system comprising: controlling the calibrated optical system to project an image to a preset position on a light projection format, wherein the image comprises at least one line in a sagittal direction and at least one line in a meridian direction; acquiring an actual grayscale distribution curve of the projected image, and confirming a Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) value corresponding to each preset position according to the actual grayscale distribution curve and a preset grayscale distribution curve; and determining a clarity of the optical system according to the MTF value corresponding to each preset position; and if any CTF value is less than a first set value, or any MTF value is less than a second set value, determining that the clarity of the optical system is unqualified.
However, using MFT to determine optical clarity is routine in the art. For example, HENDRIK teaches “By means of the transfer function of the optical system, also known as the “modulation transfer function” (MTF)—denoted here as “unsharpness”—and the overexposure effect in the construction plane, a mean value of light intensity is coupled over the structure surface into the material in the construction plane” (para. 0035). Paragraph 0092 explains “An overall imaging system comprising particularly the imaging optical system 20, the material 16 and possibly the radiation-transparent plate 48 defines a transfer function for the intensity according to the location x. Illustrated schematically in FIG. 6 with the hatching 58 is the intensity distribution, for example, directly after a micromirror unit or an LCD transmitted-light mask. Due to the transfer function of the overall system, an intensity reduction is produced together with a blurred intensity distribution in the construction plane which is signified by the hatching 60. In other words, this means that, due to optical errors, a pixel-line pair can only be imaged by the overall system with a modulation transfer function smaller than 50%.” A skilled artisan would have been well-aware of the use of MTF with thresholds to achieve optical clarity determinations.
In sum, the claims are obvious because the prior art as whole demonstrates that MTF with thresholds was familiar in the art to allow optical clarity determinations with success.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112- Indefiniteness
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(B) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
In claims 19, the following phrase has unclear meaning: Contract Transfer Function. First, this is not common term in the 3D print or optical system art. In fact, “contract transfer function” is unknown. Second, it seems to be a mis-spelling of “contrast transfer function,” which mis-spelling is also found in the specification. Thus, in light of this confusion, “contract transfer function” is unclear.
Prior Art
Aside from the above intervening prior art, the prior art fails to teach or suggest performing flat-field correction on a photographing module by using a reference light source. The prior art teaches grayscale segmenting and masking (US 20210142886; US 20180144219; CN 106273487; CN209176181U; CN113034382A); however, the Examiner cannot find prior art that teaches or suggests to use flat-field correction in 3D printing systems using LCD or DLP.
Conclusion
No claims are allowed.
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/YUNG-SHENG M TSUI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1743