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 .
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 text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on July 6, 2026, with respect to the pending claims, have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s Representative submits that the prior art (Metz) does not teach the claims because Metz does not teach receiving indications of two points. In particular, Applicant’s Representative submits that Metz’s user interaction is limited to one mouse click per coronary artery.
The examiner respectfully disagrees that the prior art does not teach receiving indications of two points. The claim only recites “receiving, by the processing circuitry, an indication of a first point on the extravascular image, the first point corresponding to a portion of the vessel” and “receiving, by the processing circuitry, an indication of a second point on the extravascular image, the second point corresponds to another portion of the vessel.”
The prior art teaches that the system receives the end point provided by the user (Metz pg. 5570 right column) and uses this end point to detect the start point (Metz II.B.1, pg. 5570-5571). The coronary centerline is then extracted using the start and end points, and are indicated in the images (Metz Fig. 8 – a line cannot be formed without two points).
Furthermore, the claim does not specify that both points must be received by a user. In fact, the claim does not even require a user input, but only requires that an indication of the first and second points to be received. As stated above and in the previous Office action, Metz teaches that the indications of first and second points are received (the user enters the end point, the system receives the end point and calculates the start point and the centerline based on the end point, the calculated centerlines comprising both start and end points are indicated in the coronary blood vessel images).
In view of this reasonable interpretation of the claims and the prior art, the examiner respectfully submits that the rejections set forth below remain proper.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
Claim(s) 1-3, 12-15, 18, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Metz et al. (“Coronary centerline extraction from CT coronary angiography images using a minimum cost path approach,” Med. Phys. 36 (12), December 2009), hereinafter referred to as Metz.
Regarding claim 1, Metz teaches a computer-implemented method, comprising:
receiving, at processing circuitry, an extravascular image from an extravascular imaging device, the extravascular image comprising indications of a vessel (Metz pg. 5569 right column: “CTCA images of 75 patients … were selected. CTCA scans were acquired … Images were reconstructed using retrospective ECG gating”; Metz Fig. 4(a); Metz pg. 5573-5574: “implemented using C++ and ITK … running the Linux operating system and each equipped with two dual-core AMD Opteron® 2216 2400 MHz processors and 16 GB memory”);
generating, by the processing circuitry, an image speed map based on the extravascular image ([0067] of the specification states that “image speed map 220 comprises a copy of extravascular image 218 where the contrast of the image has been adjusted to prominently distinguish between the vessel represented in extravascular image 218 and other parts of the extravascular image 218,” therefore, the speed map has been interpreted as a contrast-adjusted image; Metz pg. 5571 right column: “compute the Hessian matrix using un-normalized Gaussian derivative operators and subsequently weigh the eigenvalues … to ensure the bronchi will have high cost values and to improve the contrast of the cost image”; Metz Fig. 4(d));
receiving, by the processing circuitry, an indication of a first point on the extravascular image, the first point corresponding to a portion of the vessel (Metz pg. 5570 right column: “II.B.1. Start point detection. Automatic start point detection decreases the amount of user interaction needed and facilitates precomputation of cumulative cost images … A point in the center of the aorta in the neighborhood of the coronary ostia is used as the start point for centerline extraction”; Metz pg. 5572 left column: “The start point for centerline extraction was determined in all 75 images using the algorithm described in Sec. II B 1”);
identifying, by the processing circuitry, a shortest distance from each of a plurality of pixels on the image to the first point based on the image speed map (Metz pg. 5570 right column: “The shortest Euclidian distance to the background class D(
x
→
) is calculated for every foreground”);
receiving, by the processing circuitry, an indication of a second point on the extravascular image, the second point correspond to another portion of the vessel (Metz pg. 5570 right column: “Once the end point is provided by the user, the final centerline is determined by following the path of steepest descent to the starting point of the vessel”); and
determining, by the processing circuitry, a path of the vessel based on the second point and the shortest distance from each of the plurality of pixels to the first point (Metz pg. 5570 right column discussed above; Metz pg. 5572 right column: “Centerline extraction was performed between the automatically found aorta point and the manually defined end point of the vessel”; Metz pg. 5573 left column: “To further demonstrate the robustness of the method, a qualitative evaluation was performed on the remaining 63 images using the cost function … Centerline extraction was performed between the automatically found aorta point and a manually defined end point … Visual inspection of the resulting centerlines was performed and a second point was manually added when the path did not seem to follow the vessel of interest for more than 50%”).
Regarding claim 2, Metz teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, comprising smoothing the path (Metz 5571 right column: “Resulting center points in the axial slices are smoothed in the z-direction using a Gaussian kernel with standard deviation σz to ensure continuity between adjacent slices”).
Regarding claim 3, Metz teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the path comprises a midpoint and smoothing the path comprising:
adding an intermediate point along the path on either side of the midpoint (Metz Fig. 1 & pg. 5570 left column: “The manually annotated centerlines of both observers were resampled equidistantly (0.1 mm) using a third degree polynomial for interpolation between consecutive annotated points. The radius at every point on the centerlines was linearly interpolated along the polynomial between the manually defined radii”);
identifying a shortest path from each of the intermediate midpoints of respective ones of the first point and the second point (Metz pg. 5570 right column discussed above);
selecting a line or curve segment from a plurality of line or curve segments connecting the intermediate points based in part on the shortest path from each of the intermediate midpoints to respective ones of the first point and the second point (Metz Fig. 1 & pg. 5570 left column discussed above); and
forming a path from the shortest path the selected line or curve segment and the shortest path from each of the intermediate midpoints to respective ones of the first point and the second point (Metz Fig. 1 & pg. 5570 left column discussed above).
Regarding claim 12, Metz teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, comprising:
identifying, by the processing circuitry, a shortest distance from each of a plurality of pixels on the image to the second point based on the image speed map (Metz pg. 5570 right column, pg. 5572 right column, pg. 5573 left column discussed above);
receiving an indication to move a location of the first point (Metz pg. 5570 right column, pg. 5572 right column, pg. 5573 left column discussed above teach that the points are manually adjusted if the path does not follow the vessel of interest for more than 50%);
identifying an updated path of the vessel based on the moved first point and the shortest distance from each of the plurality of pixels to the second point (Metz pg. 5570 right column, pg. 5572 right column, pg. 5573 left column discussed above; also see Metz Figs. 2, 4, 8).
Regarding claim 13, Metz teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, comprising:
identifying, by the processing circuitry, a shortest distance from each of a plurality of pixels on the image to the second point based on the image speed map (Metz Fig. 1 pg. 5570, pg. 5572 right column, pg. 5573 left column discussed above);
receiving an indication of a midpoint on the extravascular image (Metz Fig. 1 & pg. 5570 discussed above); and
identifying an updated path of the vessel based on the midpoint and the shortest distance from each of the plurality of pixels to the first point and the midpoint and the shortest distance from each of the plurality of pixels to the second point (Metz Figs. 1, 2, 4, 8, pg. 5570 column, pg. 5572 right column, pg. 5573 left column discussed above).
Regarding claim 14, Metz teaches a computing device for an extravascular image processing system, the computing device comprising:
a processor; and a memory device coupled to the processor, the memory device comprising instructions that when executed by the processor cause the computing device to perform the method (Metz pg. 5573-5574 discussed above) described in claim 1.
Therefore, claim 14 is rejected using the same rationale as applied to claim 1 discussed above.
Claim 15 is rejected using the same rationale as applied to claim 3 discussed above.
Regarding claim 18, Metz teaches a computer-readable medium for an extravascular image processing system, comprising instructions, which when executed by a processor of the extravascular image processing system cause the extravascular image processing system to perform the method (Metz pg. 5573-5574 discussed above) described in claim 1.
Therefore, claim 18 is rejected using the same rationale as applied to claim 1 discussed above.
Claim 19 is rejected using the same rationale as applied to claim 3 discussed above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 4-11, 16, 17, and 20 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 4, the prior art of record teaches that it was known at the time the application was filed to use the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further generating, by the processing circuitry, the image speed map comprising:
de-speckling the extravascular image to generate a de-specked extravascular image (Metz Fig. 4(b)-(c)).
However, the prior art, alone or in combination, does not appear to teach or suggest normalizing the brightness and/or contrast of the de-speckled extravascular image to generate a normalized extravascular image; and darkening a centerline of the vessel based in part on the de-speckled extravascular image to generate the image speed map (Note that the prior art teaches computing the Hessian matrix using un-normalized Gaussian derivative operators instead of using the traditional normalization method, see Metz pg. 5571, right column).
Claims 5-11 depend from claim 4 and therefore are objected to for the same reason as claim 4 discussed above.
Claim 16 is objected to for the same reason as claim 4 discussed above.
Regarding claim 17, the prior art of record teaches that it was known at the time the application was filed to use the computing device of claim 14.
However, the prior art, alone or in combination, does not appear to teach or suggest identifying ambient light in the de-speckled image based on a blurring filter having a median diameter between 30 and 120 pixels.
Claim 20 is objected to for the same reason as claim 4 discussed above.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SOO J SHIN whose telephone number is (571)272-9753. The examiner can normally be reached M-F; 10-6.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Matthew Bella can be reached at (571)272-7778. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Soo Shin/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2667 571-272-9753
soo.shin@uspto.gov
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