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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/10/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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.
Claims 1 and 2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chizue Tanaka et al (US 20220409185 A1) in view of Takayama Tomoji (JP 2001327496 A).
Regarding claim 1, Tanaka et al discloses an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus (¶ [8]), comprising:
a characteristic estimation unit that analyzes a reception signal among reception signals obtained by transmitting and receiving ultrasound waves with respect to a subject, to estimate a signal characteristic of the reception signal for each region in a data space of the reception signal (¶ [28-31] information included in the received signals may be analyzed to determine characteristic information of the signal);
an image processing parameter decision unit that decides an image processing parameter based on the estimated signal characteristic for each region (¶ [28] parameters suitable for the state of the subject and imaging site determined based on signal characteristic); and
an image formation unit that forms an ultrasound image subjected to image quality enhancement processing based on the image processing parameter based on the reception signal subjected to the detection processing (¶ [33] image processing based on parameters).
Tanaka et al fails to explicitly disclose analyzing the reception signal before detection processing.
Tomoji, in the same field of endeavor of ultrasonic diagnostic systems to process received signals (¶ [1]), teaches analyzing the reception signal before detection processing (¶ [10-11]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was effectively filed for the ultrasound diagnostic apparatus as disclose by Tanaka et al comprising a characteristic estimation unit that analyzes a reception signal among reception signals obtained by transmitting and receiving ultrasound waves with respect to a subject, to estimate a signal characteristic of the reception signal for each region in a data space of the reception signal to utilize the teachings of Tomoji which teaches analyzing the reception signal before detection processing so that the component dropped by detection processing can be imaged and the utility value of the ultrasonic image can be expanded.
Regarding claim 2, Tanaka et al discloses the ultrasound diagnostic apparatus according to claim 1 (see rejection of claim 1), wherein the signal characteristic is at least one of coherence of each reception signal output by each oscillation element that transmits and receives the ultrasound waves, an S/N ratio calculated by frequency analysis with respect to the reception signal (¶ [108]), or attenuation information indicating attenuation of signal intensity in a depth direction of the subject (¶ [26-28]), which is calculated by the frequency analysis with respect to the reception signal (¶ [28]), the attenuation information being estimated by excluding the signal intensity of the region which includes a structure in the subject (¶ [26]) and is specified based on the reception signal before the detection processing (see rejection of claim 1).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-5 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
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/JAMARES Q WASHINGTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681
January 24, 2026