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 .
Detailed Action
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on April 17th, 2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 3-27-2026 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 12-14, & 18-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Scholler et al (Jules Scholler, Viacheslav Mazlin, Olivier Thouvenin, Kassandra Groux, Peng Xiao, José-Alain Sahel, Mathias Fink, Claude Boccara, and Kate Grieve, "Probing dynamic processes in the eye at multiple spatial and temporal scales with multimodal full field OCT," Biomed. Opt. Express 10, 731-746 (2019)) (Scholler).
Regarding Claim 12, Scholler discloses a method for three-dimensional imaging of a transparent biological object in a biological sample by full-field optical tomography, the three-dimensional imaging method comprising:
positioning the sample in the vicinity of an object focal plane of a microscope lens (Objective), said microscope lens comprising a given optical axis (Δ) (Section 2.3);
illuminating the sample in transmission by an illumination beam of spatially incoherent light with a given central wavelength (λ) (Fig. 1(a), LED 660nm, Section 2.3);
relatively displacing said microscope lens relative to said sample, along an axial direction parallel to the optical axis of the microscope lens, to define a plurality of positions of the sample, each position corresponding to a section of said biological object centered on the object focal plane of the microscope lens (Section 2.3, Page 735); and for each position of the sample, producing at least one first image of an object field of said section (Section 2.3, Page 735, Fig. 1(d)) comprising:
acquiring, by a two-dimensional acquisition device (Section 2.2) comprising a plurality of elementary detectors arranged in a detection plane, a plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals resulting from optical interference between the illumination beam incident on the object field and a beam scattered by said object field (Section 3.1, Fig. 2, en face images);
wherein said detection plane is optically conjugated with the object focal plane of the microscope lens by an imaging optical system comprising said microscope lens (Section 2.3, Page 735). Plane locking ensures the focal plane and detection plane coincide;
calculating, by a processing unit, said at least one first image, from said plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals (section 2.4);
generating a three-dimensional image of the transparent biological object based on said calculated at least one first image (Section 3.1, Fig. 2, 3D volume).
Regarding Claim 18, Scholler discloses a three-dimensional imaging system for imaging a transparent biological object in a biological sample by full-field optical tomography, the imaging system comprising:
a light source configured for the emission of an illumination beam of spatially incoherent light, of given central length, said illumination beam being configured to illuminate the sample in transmission (Fig. 1(a), LED 660nm, Section 2.3);
an optical imaging system comprising a microscope lens (Objective) with a given optical axis (Δ) and a given object focal plane in the vicinity of which, in operation, the sample is positioned; (Section 2.3)
means for relatively displacing said microscope lens (TS, translation stage, Fig. 1(a)) relative to said sample, along an axial direction parallel to the optical axis of the microscope lens (Section 2.3, Page 735);
a two-dimensional acquisition device comprising a plurality of elementary detectors arranged in a detection plane, said detection plane being optically conjugated with the object focal plane of the microscope lens by said optical imaging system (Section 2.2); and a processing unit; and wherein, for each section of a plurality of sections of said biological object:
said three-dimensional imaging system is configured for the acquisition, by said two-dimensional acquisition device, of a plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals resulting from optical interference between said illumination beam and a beam scattered by an object field of said section (Section 3.1, Fig. 2, en face images);
said processing unit is configured to calculate from said plurality of two- dimensional interferometric signals at least one first image of said object field of said section (section 2.4) and wherein said processing unit is further configured to generate a three-dimensional image of the transparent biological object based on said calculated at least one first image (Section 3.1, Fig. 2, 3D volume).
Regarding Claims 13 & 19, Scholler discloses the aforementioned. Further, Scholler discloses wherein the two- dimensional interferometric signals of said plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals are acquired for different positions of the object focal plane in the thickness of said section, resulting in a plurality of predetermined phase shifts between said illumination beam and said scattered beam ranging between - π/2 and π/2 (Section 2.1).
Regarding Claims 14 & 20, Scholler discloses the aforementioned. Further, Scholler discloses wherein the calculation of said at least one first image comprises a linear combination of said plurality of two- dimensional interferometric signals (Section 2.1, Page 733, Paragraph between Equations 2 & 3). Acquiring two frames separated by a phase shift and combining them by subtraction is a linear combination of the plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Scholler.
Regarding Claim 15, Scholler discloses the aforementioned but fails to explicitly disclose wherein the relative displacement of said microscope lens relative to said sample follows a periodic function of maximum amplitude λ/4, where λ is the central wavelength of the illumination beam;
However, this would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed since it has been held that where the general conditions of a claim are disclosed in the prior art, discovering the optimum or working ranges involves only routine skill in the art. In re Aller, 105 USPQ 233;
Therefore, it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill at the time the invention was filed to modify Scholler with wherein the relative displacement of said microscope lens relative to said sample follows a periodic function of maximum amplitude 2/4, where 2 is the central wavelength of the illumination beam because this ensures the images have overlapping resolution ranges since the minimum resolution ranges are generally considered to be around )/(2*NA).
Claim(s) 16, 17, 21, & 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Scholler in view of Boccara et al (PGPub 2018/0120550)(Boccara).
Regarding Claims 16, 17, 21, & 22, Scholler discloses the aforementioned but fails to explicitly disclose wherein: the two-dimensional interferometric signals of said plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals are acquired for a fixed position of the microscope lens relative to said sample, and calculating said at least one first image of the object field of said section comprises calculating, for each elementary detector of the two-dimensional acquisition device, at least one pixel value as a function of a value of a parameter representative of the temporal variations in intensity of said two-dimensional interferometric signals acquired by said elementary detector; wherein said parameter is representative of the temporal dispersion of the intensities of said interferometric signals;
However, Boccara discloses wherein: the two-dimensional interferometric signals of said plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals are acquired for a fixed position of the microscope lens relative to said sample (Step 310, Paragraphs 86 & 87), and
calculating said at least one first image of the object field of said section comprises calculating, for each elementary detector of the two-dimensional acquisition device, at least one pixel value as a function of a value of a parameter representative of the temporal variations in intensity of said two-dimensional interferometric signals acquired by said elementary detector (Step 320, Paragraph 94);
wherein said parameter is representative of the temporal dispersion of the intensities of said interferometric signals (Paragraph 95);
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Scholler with wherein: the two-dimensional interferometric signals of said plurality of two-dimensional interferometric signals are acquired for a fixed position of the microscope lens relative to said sample, and calculating said at least one first image of the object field of said section comprises calculating, for each elementary detector of the two-dimensional acquisition device, at least one pixel value as a function of a value of a parameter representative of the temporal variations in intensity of said two-dimensional interferometric signals acquired by said elementary detector; wherein said parameter is representative of the temporal dispersion of the intensities of said interferometric signals because it’s a functionally equivalent of other methods of imaging with a FF-OCT and offers such advantages as being able to clearly reveal the movements internal to the sample for the structures present in this slice of the sample.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JONATHON COOK whose telephone number is (571)270-1323. The examiner can normally be reached 11am-7pm.
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/JONATHON COOK/Examiner, Art Unit 2877 June 27, 2026
/Kara E. Geisel/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2877
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