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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Claims 1-5 and 9 in the reply filed on 11/24/2025 is acknowledged.
Claims 4-8 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 11/24/2025.
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-5 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “a non-organ region”. This term is unclear as to what it includes and doesn’t include. Clearly the background (everything outside the organ) would be considered as a non-organ region. Is the tumor candidate region (which is inside the organ) included in the non-organ or organ region? The specification discusses the problem of a cavity present within the organ, Is this cavity, which is inside the organ, part of the organ or non-organ region?
Claim 1 recites “extracting an organ region representing an organ and a tumor candidate region having a feature for identifying a tumor in the organ from image data obtained by capturing an image of the organ;
….
removing, from the extracted tumor candidate region, a tumor candidate region being present only at an outer edge portion of the non-organ region in the organ region. “. It is not clear if the second tumor candidate region is the same as the first candidate region.
Claim 3 recites “the threshold value is a pixel value between a range of pixel values corresponding to the organ and a range of pixel values corresponding to the tumor in the image data. “ If the threshold is between the organ and tumor that means the organ is set to 0 and tumor set to 1 (or vice-versa). This definition appears to be inconsistent with claim 1, which appears to define the “cavity” to not include the tumor candidate region and organ region. In other words, claim 3 requires either the tumor or organ be grouped with the non-organ region. The non-organ region (see rejection above), appears to be a region that is not part of both groups. Further clarification is required.
Claim 9 is rejected under similar grounds as claim 1.
Claims 2-5 1are rejected as dependent upon a rejected claim.
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 and 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gogin(2023/0196698) in view of Matsuda (2009/0202124).
Gogin discloses 1. An image processing method executed by a computer, the method comprising:
extracting an organ region representing an organ and a tumor candidate region having a feature for identifying a tumor in the organ from image data obtained by capturing an image of the organ; (Gogin, paragraph 35, “Once 3D image scanning is completed, a medical imaging system can analyze the content of the resulting 2D images 204 to identify gradients, borders, or contours within the images 204 and delineate these contours using a suitable labeling convention; e.g., by marking the identified contours with segmentation lines 302 (depicted as heavy white lines in FIG. 3b, although segmentation lines 302 may be rendered in any suitable color). This 3D segmentation process can identify and mark the contours of an organ, a tumor, a cavity, or another area of interest. In the example depicted in FIGS. 3a and 3b, the right lung 304 and left lung 306 have been delineated using segmentation lines 302”)
generating a non-organ region representing a region where the organ is not present using the image data; and (Gogin, paragraph 35, “Once 3D image scanning is completed, a medical imaging system can analyze the content of the resulting 2D images 204 to identify gradients, borders, or contours within the images 204 and delineate these contours using a suitable labeling convention; e.g., by marking the identified contours with segmentation lines 302 (depicted as heavy white lines in FIG. 3b, although segmentation lines 302 may be rendered in any suitable color). This 3D segmentation process can identify and mark the contours of an organ, a tumor, a cavity, or another area of interest. In the example depicted in FIGS. 3a and 3b, the right lung 304 and left lung 306 have been delineated using segmentation lines 302”)
But does not expressly discloses “removing, from the extracted tumor candidate region, a tumor candidate region being present only at an outer edge portion of the non-organ region in the organ region. “
Matsuda discloses “removing, from the extracted tumor candidate region, a tumor candidate region being present only at an outer edge portion of the non-organ region in the organ region. “ (Matsuda, Abstract, “In the second step, false positive candidates are filtered by using shape information. We use tumor shape information to reduce the false positive regions. As tumors have usually a sphere-like shape, we just need to check the circularity of the candidate regions in each slice to reject false positive. We also reject those candidate tumors that their centroids are near the liver boundary. Quantitative evaluation of our method shows that it can decrease false positive rate successfully without decreasing true positive rate, compared with other conventional methods”)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to Add the step of removing false positives as shown by Matsuda as a post processing step for Gogin.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to remove false positives, thereby having a more accurate image segmentation.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known methods 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 Gogin with Matsuda to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
Claim 9 is rejected under similar grounds as claim 1. Paragraph 29 teaches a CRM.
Claim(s) 2 and 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gogin in view of Matsuda in further view of Nitta (2016/0058404).
Gogin in view of Matsuda discloses 2. The image processing method according to claim 1,
BUT does not expressly disclose wherein the process of generating the non-organ region includes binarizing the image data using a threshold value representing a specified pixel value to generate a binarized image in which a pixel having a pixel value higher than the threshold value is represented by a first value and a pixel having a pixel value lower than the threshold value is represented by a second value, and detecting a pixel represented by the second value in the organ region or an expanded organ region obtained by expanding the organ region in the binarized image to generate the non-organ region.
Nitta discloses binarizing the image data using a threshold value representing a specified pixel value to generate a binarized image in which a pixel having a pixel value higher than the threshold value is represented by a first value and a pixel having a pixel value lower than the threshold value is represented by a second value, and (Nitta, paragraph 55, “The deriving unit 381a binarizes the CT image im, to generate the first binarized image B1 shown in FIG. 8 (step S101). The first binarized image B1 is an image that is divided into a region A1 in which the air A is present and a region O1 in which the air A is not present. The region A1 in the first binarized image B1 corresponds to the region Ai in the CT image im. The region O1 in the first binarized image B1 corresponds to a combined region of the region Wi, the region Ii, and the region Gi in the CT image im. Because the X-ray attenuation coefficient of the air A is smaller than the X-ray attenuation coefficient of other materials, a difference between the brightness of the region Ai in which the air A is present and the brightness of the region other than the air A (the region Wi, the region Ii, and the region Gi) is large. Therefore, the deriving unit 381a can divide the CT image im into a high-brightness region in which a brightness value of a pixel the brightness values of which is equal to or larger than a threshold is 1, that is the region A1, and a low-brightness region in which a brightness value of a pixel the brightness value of which is smaller than the threshold is 0, that is the region O1, easily by binarization using a threshold set according to the air. Therefore, the deriving unit 381a can generate the first binarized image B1 easily from the CT image im.”)
detecting a pixel represented by the second value in the organ region or an expanded organ region obtained by expanding the organ region in the binarized image to generate the non-organ region. (Nitta,Fig. 8)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to include the step of binarizing the image as shown by Nitta for the generating the non-organ region of Gogin in view of Matsuda
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to clearly define which regions belong to the non-organ.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known methods 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 Gogin with Matsuda and Nitta to obtain the invention as specified in claim 2.
Gogin in view of Matsuda in view of Nitta discloses 4. The image processing method according to claim 2, wherein the threshold value is determined based on a histogram of pixel values of pixels belonging to the organ region. (see claim 4, where the threshold is selected to be a number less than pixels corresponding to organ )
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GANDHI THIRUGNANAM whose telephone number is (571)270-3261. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30-5PM.
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/GANDHI THIRUGNANAM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2672
1 Claim 3&5 would be allowable if the pending rejections under 112 were overcome.