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 .
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 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sartor et al. (2008/0234981) in view of Boudreaux et al. (2022/0092812).
Regarding claim 1, Sartor et al teach a fringe line detection and phase unwrapping method comprising:
detecting fringe lines (boundaries and edges of fringe) of an input image to obtain an image with detected fringe lines (paragraphs 74-86 where edges and boundaries are fringe lines in the interferogram and steps 124-130 if figure 14);
performing circulation integral on the detected fringe lines to repair the detected fringe lines to thereby obtain an image with repaired fringe lines (paragraphs 94-97 note integral over arc length);
performing path integral on the repaired fringe lines to unwrap the repaired fringe lines to thereby obtain an image with unwrapped fringe lines (integrated over limits of the maximum fringe length) ; and
identifying error points of the unwrapped fringe lines (paragraphs 105-107 note 20 iterations will correct data points); and
processing the error points to obtain an output result (figure 29).
While Sartor fails to specifically teach the use of a convolutional neural network, Boudreaux et al do. See figure 20 and paragraphs 98+. Since both systems are in the same field of endeavor and phase unwrap Sar images into height, it would have been obvious at the time of filing to implement the fringe line detection / phase unwrapping of Sartor on a CNN as taught by Boudreaux et al. to modernize the calculations of Sartor and allow for faster processing of the SAR images. Claim 8 is rejected for similar reasons in that, the processing units claims are equivalent to those taught in Boudreaux.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Claims 2-7 contain specific limitations not found in the prior art.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Saied et al. and Zhou et al. are cited as teaching fringe line detection and phase unwrapping of SAR images.
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/CHRISTOPHER S KELLEY/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2482
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