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/Restriction
The examiner is grateful for applicant’s thorough response to the previous restriction mailed on January 16th, 2025, where applicant elected Species VII, claims 1, 21, and 24-25, with traverse. The restriction set forth on November 19th, 2025, has been withdrawn. Please see a new restriction requirement below.
Restriction to one of the following inventions is required under 35 U.S.C. 121:
I. Claims 1-9 and 24-25, drawn to modifying one or more images of a plurality of images comprising teeth of an individual to align the plurality of images to one another, in order to generate a video comprising the plurality of images and one or more synthetic images, classified in G06T 2207/30036.
II. Claims 1, 10-16, and 24-25, drawn to replacing one or more images of a plurality of images comprising teeth of an individual to align the plurality of images to one another, in order to generate a video comprising the plurality of images and one or more synthetic images, classified in G06T 2207/30036.
III. Claims 1, 17-23, and 24-25, drawn to generating one or more synthetic images that are based on sequential images, in order to generate a video comprising the plurality of images and one or more synthetic images, classified in G06T 11/60.
The inventions are independent or distinct, each from the other because:
Inventions I, II, and III are related as subcombinations disclosed as usable together in a single combination. The subcombinations are distinct if they do not overlap in scope and are not obvious variants, and if it is shown that at least one subcombination is separately usable. In the instant case, subcombination II has separate utility such as replacing images in a sequence of images representing different stages of teeth in order to align the images together. See MPEP § 806.05(d).
The examiner has required restriction between subcombinations usable together. Where applicant elects a subcombination and claims thereto are subsequently found allowable, any claim(s) depending from or otherwise requiring all the limitations of the allowable subcombination will be examined for patentability in accordance with 37 CFR 1.104. See MPEP § 821.04(a). Applicant is advised that if any claim presented in a divisional application is anticipated by, or includes all the limitations of, a claim that is allowable in the present application, such claim may be subject to provisional statutory and/or nonstatutory double patenting rejections over the claims of the instant application.
Restriction for examination purposes as indicated is proper because all the inventions listed in this action are independent or distinct for the reasons given above and there would be a serious search and/or examination burden if restriction were not required because one or more of the following reasons apply:
--the species or groupings of patentably indistinct species have acquired a separate status in the art in view of their different classification;
--the species or groupings of patentably indistinct species have acquired a separate status in the art due to their recognized divergent subject matter; and/or
--the species or groupings of patentably indistinct species require a different field of search (e.g., searching different classes/subclasses or electronic resources, or employing different search strategies or search queries.
Applicant is advised that the reply to this requirement to be complete must include (i) an election of an invention to be examined even though the requirement may be traversed (37 CFR 1.143) and (ii) identification of the claims encompassing the elected invention.
The election of an invention may be made with or without traverse. To reserve a right to petition, the election must be made with traverse. If the reply does not distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement, the election shall be treated as an election without traverse. Traversal must be presented at the time of election in order to be considered timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are added after the election, applicant must indicate which of these claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
If Group III is elected, a further species election is required:
This application contains claims directed to the following patentably distinct species:
Species I: Claims 1 and 17-21, directed to generating one or more synthetic images using optical flow and a trained machine learning model.
Species II: Claims 1 and 22-23, directed to generating synthetic images that are intermediates of prior intermediate images.
The species are independent or distinct because the species contain alternate methods for creating smooth intermediate synthetic images. In addition, these species are not obvious variants of each other based on the current record.
Applicant is required under 35 U.S.C. 121 to elect a single disclosed species, or a single grouping of patentably indistinct species, for prosecution on the merits to which the claims shall be restricted if no generic claim is finally held to be allowable. Currently, claim 1 is generic.
There is a serious search and/or examination burden for the patentably distinct species as set forth above because at least the following reason(s) apply:
--the species or groupings of patentably indistinct species have acquired a separate status in the art in view of their different classification;
--the species or groupings of patentably indistinct species have acquired a separate status in the art due to their recognized divergent subject matter; and/or
--the species or groupings of patentably indistinct species require a different field of search (e.g., searching different classes/subclasses or electronic resources, or employing different search strategies or search queries.
Applicant is advised that the reply to this requirement to be complete must include (i) an election of a species to be examined even though the requirement may be traversed (37 CFR 1.143) and (ii) identification of the claims encompassing the elected species or grouping of patentably indistinct species, including any claims subsequently added. An argument that a claim is allowable or that all claims are generic is considered nonresponsive unless accompanied by an election.
The election may be made with or without traverse. To preserve a right to petition, the election must be made with traverse. If the reply does not distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the election of species requirement, the election shall be treated as an election without traverse. Traversal must be presented at the time of election in order to be considered timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are added after the election, applicant must indicate which of these claims are readable on the elected species or grouping of patentably indistinct species.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the species, or groupings of patentably indistinct species from which election is required, are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing them to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the species unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other species.
Upon the allowance of a generic claim, applicant will be entitled to consideration of claims to additional species which depend from or otherwise require all the limitations of an allowable generic claim as provided by 37 CFR 1.141.
During a telephone conversation with Attorney Ben Kimes on February 2nd, 2026, a provisional election was made without traverse to prosecute the invention of Group III, claims 1, 17-25, and sub-species 17-21. Claims 1, 17-21, and 24-25 are thus elected. Affirmation of this election must be made by applicant in replying to this Office action. Claims 2-16 and 22-23 are withdrawn from further consideration by the examiner, 37 CFR 1.142(b), as being drawn to a non-elected invention. The examiner thanks Applicant for electing a second time.
Applicant is reminded that upon the cancelation of claims to a non-elected invention, the inventorship must be corrected in compliance with 37 CFR 1.48(a) if one or more of the currently named inventors is no longer an inventor of at least one claim remaining in the application. A request to correct inventorship under 37 CFR 1.48(a) must be accompanied by an application data sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76 that identifies each inventor by his or her legal name and by the processing fee required under 37 CFR 1.17(i).
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 24-25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nikolskiy et al. (US-20230149127-A1) and further in view of Wen (WO-2006065955-A2).
Regarding claim 1, Nikolskiy teaches a system comprising: a memory; and a processing device operatively coupled to the memory (“The computing systems 102, 104, 106, 109, 111 include one or more processing circuits, which may include processor(s) 112 and memory 114,” Para [0036]), wherein the processing device is to:
receive a plurality of images comprising teeth of an individual (“the second 3D representation may include applying the tooth movements to the initial 3D representation to move the orientation and rotation of each tooth (or group of teeth) into a final treatment plan position,” Para [0032]), wherein the plurality of images are arranged in a sequence and each of the plurality of images is associated with a different stage of treatment of the teeth (“the visualization engine 1306 may show an initial stage of the treatment plan corresponding to a first 3D model and/or dental aligners corresponding to the initial stage of the treatment plan… and a final stage of the treatment plan corresponding to a final 3D model and/or dental aligners,” Para [0098]);
generate one or more synthetic images, wherein each synthetic image of the one or more synthetic images is generated based on a pair of sequential images in the sequence (“The staging processing engine 212 may be configured to generate the treatment plan by generating a plurality of preliminary intermediate 3D representations representing a series of stages from the initial position shown in the initial 3D representation to a preliminary final position,” Para [0096]) and is an intermediate image that comprises an intermediate state of the teeth between a first state of a first image of the pair of sequential images and a second state of a second image of the pair of sequential images (“as shown in FIG. 9, the stages may include an initial stage including a 3D digital model of the patient's teeth at their initial position, one or more intermediate stages including 3D digital model(s) of the patient's teeth at one or more intermediate positions, and a final stage including a 3D digital model of the patient's teeth at the final position,” Para [0058]);
PNG
media_image1.png
383
626
media_image1.png
Greyscale
and generate a video comprising the plurality of images and the one or more synthetic images (“The visualization engine 1306 may be configured to generate the visualization as a video, a series of 2D images, or other graphical/visual representation of the treatment plan,” Para [0099]).
Nikolskiy fails to teach the following limitation as further claimed. Wen, however, further teaches:
perform at least one of modifying (“whitening”) or replacing one or more images of the plurality of images to align the plurality of images to one another (“in a tooth whitening application the final tooth color as well as intermediate stages between the initial and final tooth colors may be simulated,” Para [0113]).
Wen is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of teeth treatment planning. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Wen into Nikolskiy for the benefit of a more comprehensive treatment analysis for the patient.
Claims 24 and 25 are non-transitory computer readable medium and method claims that correspond to system claim 1. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons as claim 1.
Claim(s) 17-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nikolskiy et al. (US-20230149127-A1) and Wen (WO-2006065955-A2) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Siow et al. (US-20210334958-A1).
Regarding claim 17, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein. Nikolskiy in view of Wen teaches the system of claim 1, but fails to teach the following limitations as further claimed. Siow, however, further teaches:
wherein generating a synthetic image of the one or more synthetic images comprises:
determining, for a pair of sequential images of the plurality of images in the sequence, an optical flow (“In this embodiment, the CNN model is implemented to be an optical flow CNN model,” Para [0025]) between a first image and a second image of the pair of sequential images (“for each pair of consecutive X-ray images among the M number of X-ray images, obtaining, by the processor, K number of intermediate image(s) by using the pair of consecutive X-ray images as inputs to a convolutional neural network (CNN) model that has been trained for frame interpolation,” Para [0007]);
and generating the synthetic image based on the optical flow (“obtaining, by the processor, K number of intermediate image(s) using the pair of consecutive X-ray images as inputs to a convolutional neural network (CNN),” Para [0007]).
Siow is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of imaging body parts for the purpose of creating models of the body. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Siow into Nikolskiy and Wen for the benefit of a smoother and more continuous synthetic image.
Regarding claim 18, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein. Nikolskiy in view of Wen teaches the system of claim 1, but fails to teach the following limitations as further claimed. Siow, however, further teaches:
wherein generating a synthetic image of the one or more synthetic images comprises:
inputting a pair of sequential images of the plurality of images in the sequence into a trained machine learning model, wherein the trained machine learning model outputs the synthetic image (“for each pair of consecutive X-ray images among the M number of X-ray images, obtaining, by the processor, K number of intermediate image(s) by using the pair of consecutive X-ray images as inputs to a convolutional neural network (CNN) model that has been trained for frame interpolation,” Para [0007]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Siow into Nikolskiy and Wen for the benefit of a smoother and more continuous synthetic image.
Regarding claim 19, the rejection of claim 18 is incorporated herein. Nikolskiy in view of Wen and Siow teach the system of claim 18, and Siow further teaches:
wherein the trained machine learning model comprises a generative model (“the optical flow CNN model includes a first convolutional encoding-decoding module and a second convolutional encoding-decoding module,” Para [0026]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Siow into Nikolskiy and Wen for the benefit of a smoother and more continuous synthetic image.
Regarding claim 20, the rejection of claim 19 is incorporated herein. Nikolskiy in view of Wen and Siow teach the system of claim 19, and Siow further teaches:
wherein one or more layers of the generative model determine an optical flow between the pair of sequential images, and wherein the optical flow is used by the generative model to generate the synthetic image (“The first convolutional encoding-decoding module is configured to compute intermediate optical flow based on two input images, where the intermediate optical flow is related to intermediate image (s) to be interpolated between the two input images,” Para [0026]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Siow into Nikolskiy and Wen for the benefit of a smoother and more continuous synthetic image.
Claim(s) 21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nikolskiy et al. (US-20230149127-A1) and Wen (WO-2006065955-A2) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Cheng et al., “Feature Flow for Frame Interpolation”, Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Melon University, https://web.archive.org/web/20190728204408/http://rishub.me/feature-flow-frame.pdf (2019), hereinafter referred to as Cheng.
Regarding claim 21, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein. Nikolskiy in view of Wen teaches the system of claim 1, but fail to teach the following limitations as further claimed. Cheng, however, further teaches:
wherein generating a synthetic image of the one or more synthetic images comprises: transforming a first image and a second image (“flow network takes as input two consecutive frames,” pg. 3, Section 3.1) in the sequence into a feature space (“The job of the frame autoencoder is to learn high level features of frames from a video in an unsupervised manner,” pg. 3, Section 3.1; that is, the autoencoder produces feature maps);
determining an optical flow between the first image and the second image in the feature space (“in contrast to typical flow networks which predict the optical flow of pixels in an image, this model attempts to predict the optical flow on the feature maps produced by the frame autoencoder,” pg. 3, Section 3.1);
and using the optical flow in the feature space to generate the synthetic image that is an intermediate image between the first image and the second image (“The last feature map is then convolved to produce the final output frame,” Pg. 3, Section. 3.1, and Fig. 5, pg. 7, which shows the output interpolated frame being in the middle).
PNG
media_image2.png
188
692
media_image2.png
Greyscale
Cheng is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of performing frame interpolation using optical flow for video smoothing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Cheng into Nikolskiy and Wen for the benefit of smoother interpolated images.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Gorbovskoy et al. (US-20250009470-A1) teaches a method for generating a treatment plan for a patient’s teeth.
Anssari Moin et al. (US-20210322136-A1) teaches a method for creating intermediate teeth images for a dentist treatment plan.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RACHEL A OMETZ whose telephone number is (571)272-2535. The examiner can normally be reached 6:45am-4:00pm ET Monday-Thursday, 6:45am-1:00pm ET every other Friday.
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, Vu Le can be reached at 571-272-7332. 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.
/Rachel Anne Ometz/ Examiner, Art Unit 2668 2/5/26
/VU LE/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2668