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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed on 3/10/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-26 under 35 USC § 102 and 35 USC § 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Painchaud et al. (U.S. Publication No. 20230127374).
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 person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(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 12-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Painchaud et al. (U.S. Publication No. 20230127374).
The applied reference has common joint inventors with the instant application. Based upon the earlier effectively filed date of the reference, it constitutes prior art under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2). This rejection under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) might be overcome by: (1) a showing under 37 CFR 1.130(a) that the subject matter disclosed in the reference was obtained directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor of this application and is thus not prior art in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(A); (2) a showing under 37 CFR 1.130(b) of a prior public disclosure under 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(B) if the same invention is not being claimed; or (3) a statement pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) establishing that, not later than the effective filing date of the claimed invention, the subject matter disclosed in the reference and the claimed invention were either owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person or subject to a joint research agreement.
Regarding claim 12, Painchaud teaches a system for performing non-destructive testing, the system comprising: a non-destructive test (NDT) probe assembly comprising: at least one transducer (Paragraph 43); an analog receiver circuit electrically coupled to the at least one transducer (Paragraph 45); and a wireless transceiver circuit communicatively coupled to the analog receiver circuit, the wireless transceiver circuit comprising an encoder and a transmitter (Paragraph 47), the transmitter configured to transmit an encoded representation of an echo signal received by the analog receiver circuit from the at least one transducer (Claim 24); and a network-accessible compute facility separate from the probe assembly, the compute facility comprising at least one processor circuit, the at least one processor circuit coupled to a memory circuit comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor circuit cause the compute system to receive the encoded representation of the echo signal and to construct a time-domain representation of an instantaneous phase signal using the encoded representation (Paragraph 77).
Regarding claim 13, Painchaud teaches an intermediary device comprising: a first wireless transceiver circuit to communicate with the wireless transceiver circuit of the probe assembly using a first wireless communication scheme; and a second wireless transceiver circuit to communicate with the compute facility using a different second wireless communication scheme (Paragraphs 42, 47, and 85).
Regarding claim 14, Painchaud teaches wherein the encoded representation of the echo signal comprises a compressed representation of a time-domain echo signal established from a quantized representation of the time-domain echo signal (Paragraphs 77-78).
Regarding claim 15, Painchaud teaches wherein amplitude values of the time-domain echo signal are suppressed in the compressed representation (Paragraphs 77-78, A-scan has amplitude values of the time-domain echo signal).
Regarding claim 16, Painchaud teaches wherein the compressed representation of the time-domain echo signal received by the compute facility comprises data indicative of time indices of edge transitions in the quantized representation of the time-domain echo signal (Paragraphs 77-78).
Regarding claim 17, Painchaud teaches wherein the instructions comprise instructions to construct the time-domain representation of the instantaneous phase signal from the compressed representation including establishing a piece-wise construction (Paragraphs 56-57).
Regarding claim 18, Painchaud teaches wherein the instructions comprise instructions to aggregate constructed time-domain representations of instantaneous phase signals corresponding to multiple acoustic echo signals to generate at least one of an A-scan time series, a pixel value corresponding to a specified spatial location of a target, or a voxel value corresponding to the specified spatial location of the target (Paragraphs 77-78).
Regarding claim 19, Painchaud teaches a display device configured to receive at least one of a generated A-scan time series, a pixel value corresponding to the specified spatial location of the target, or a voxel value corresponding to the specified spatial location of the target (Paragraphs 48 and 81).
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 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Painchaud et al. (U.S. Publication No. 20230127374) in view of Fedosovsky et al. (U.S. Publication No. 20170248554).
Regarding claim 20, Painchaud teaches all the features of claim 12 as outlined above, Painchaud is silent about an optical imaging device included as a portion of the probe assembly.
Fedosovsky teaches an optical imaging device included as a portion of the probe assembly (Paragraph 44).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to incorporate a camera into Painchaud’s ultrasonic probe because pairing an ultrasonic transducer probe with a visual camera offers two major advantages: simultaneous multi-modal data acquisition (combining surface images with internal ultrasound data) and precise spatial tracking.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-11 and 21-26 are allowed over the prior art of record.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: The primary reasons for allowance of independent claim 1 is the inclusion of the specific limitations of “using the compressed representation, constructing a time-domain representation of an instantaneous phase signal from the compressed representation; wherein the compressed representation includes data indicative of changes in phase values of the acoustic echo signal; and wherein the instantaneous phase signal is used in constructing at least one of an uncompressed acoustic echo signal representation or an image”, in combination of with all other recited method steps in a method.
The primary reasons for allowance of independent claim 21 is the inclusion of the specific limitations of “transmitting the compressed representation to a network-accessible compute facility for construction of a time-domain representation of an instantaneous phase signal from the compressed representation; wherein the compressed representation includes data indicative of changes in phase values of the acoustic echo signal; and wherein the instantaneous phase signal is used in constructing at least one of an uncompressed acoustic echo signal representation or an image”, in combination of with all other recited method steps in a method.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to XIN Y ZHONG whose telephone number is (571)272-3798. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9 a.m. - 6 p.m..
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/XIN Y ZHONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2855
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