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 § 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) 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hirvonen et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication 20220001203).
Claims 1 and 11 are rejected together because claim 11 recites a control circuit configured to perform substantially the same operations recited in claim 1.
As per claims 1 and 11, Hirvonen et al. disclose a method and corresponding apparatus comprising the step(s) of:
accessing a three-dimensional representation of the patient's target volume (paras. [0051], [0058]);
overlapping a grid comprised of lattice radiotherapy vertices with the three-dimensional representation of the patient's target volume to provide a first resultant patient's target volume representation, wherein the treatment target is filled with a distribution of peaks arranged as a hexagonal lattice that may extend outside the target boundaries, the peaks defining spot locations for radiation treatment planning (paras. [0048], [0063], [0071]);
removing at least some of the lattice radiotherapy vertices that are located exterior to the first resultant patient's target volume representation to provide a second resultant patient's target volume representation, wherein peaks outside the target shape vanish and no peaks are maintained outside the target boundary (paras. [0061], [0071]); and
moving at least some of the lattice radiotherapy vertices that are located interior of the second resultant patient's target volume representation to provide a third resultant patient's target volume representation, wherein peaks within the target shape move and are rearranged to conform to the target boundaries (paras. [0068], [0071]).
To the extent Hirvonen’s lattice peaks and corresponding spot locations are not considered the claimed lattice radiotherapy vertices, it would have been obvious to utilize lattice radiotherapy vertices as the discrete lattice treatment locations of Hirvonen et al. because Hirvonen et al. teach peaks arranged in a lattice that define spot locations for radiation treatment planning (paras. [0048], [0063], [0071]).
Claims 2 and 12 recite accessing a three-dimensional mesh representation.
These features constitute a conventional and predictable manner of storing and processing target-volume geometry for boundary-conforming geometric operations.
It would have been obvious to employ a mesh representation for the Hirvonen et al. target shape because mesh representations provide a known way to describe the shape and boundaries of a three-dimensional object.
Claims 3-5 and 13-15 recite a three-dimensional cubic grid or a three-dimensional hexagonal grid, removing all lattice radiotherapy vertices located exterior to the target volume representation, and co-locating lattice radiotherapy vertices with grid nodes.
These features constitute conventional techniques for defining, positioning, and maintaining lattice treatment locations within a target volume.
Hirvonen et al. teach a hexagonal lattice arrangement of treatment locations and that peaks outside the target shape vanish and are not maintained outside the target boundary (paras. [0061], [0071]). To the extent a cubic lattice arrangement or placement at grid nodes is not expressly disclosed, it would have been obvious to employ such lattice arrangements because regular lattice patterns provide a known way to place treatment locations throughout a target volume.
Claims 6-8 and 16-18 recite moving lattice radiotherapy vertices to nodes of a centroidal Voronoi tessellation, generating the centroidal Voronoi tessellation as a function of Lloyd's algorithm, and generating the centroidal Voronoi tessellation as a function of minimizing an objective function.
These features constitute geometric optimization techniques for redistributing treatment locations within a target volume.
It would have been obvious to employ centroidal Voronoi tessellations, Lloyd's algorithm, and objective-function minimization because such techniques provide known ways to improve the placement of treatment locations within a target volume.
Claims 9-10 and 19-20 recite optimizing a lattice radiotherapy treatment plan as a function of the resultant target-volume representation and administering radiation treatment according to the optimized treatment plan.
These features constitute treatment-plan generation and execution based upon the resulting treatment-location distribution.
Hirvonen teaches determining treatment locations for radiation treatment planning and generating treatment plans based upon those locations (paras. [0048], [0063]). Administering radiation treatment according to the resulting treatment plan would have been obvious because treatment plans are generated for the purpose of delivering radiation treatment to a patient.
Conclusion
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/COURTNEY D THOMAS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2884
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