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 § 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.
Claims 1, 7-9, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Tomov (2003, Technical Information Center of Denmark).
Regarding claim 1, Tomov teaches a system comprising:
a) an imaging array that generates an imaging signal [[sec. 1.5] multi-element transducers: linear array (left) and phased array(right). The beam positions are shown with gray dashed line, and the spatial extent of one beam is shown with black line.; [pg. 4] data paths in transmit and receive are shown with thicker line to indicate that all modern scanners have many independent channels and utilize multi-element transducers. There are two types of such transducers: linear arrays and phased arrays (See Fig. 1.5). Linear array transducers can be flat or convex, and are operated by using several adjacent elements at a time in transmit and receive];
b) a decompression subsystem [[pg. 116] delay generation logic] that computes delays based on polynomial coefficients of a polynomial that computes the delays [[pg. 83] any channel can be set to use an arbitrary delay curve; [pg. 95-96, sec. general parametric approach] approach can be generalized for use with any kind of curve that is described by a quadratic function. Due to the fact that the delay curve can be described by an equation, a delay generation algorithm can be built around that equation by numerically solving it at each step of increase of a leading variable (in this case - time).], the delays being delays between a signal sent by the imaging array [[pg. 35] Section 4.1 demonstrates by an example the need for compressing the focusing data. Section 4.2 shows the delay calculation geometry and the equations that can be derived from it. Section 4.3 describes the delta-encoding and its performance with respect to compression of delay information. In Section 4.4, the piecewise-linear approximation approach is presented. The general parametric approach is described in Section 4.5 and the LUCS delay generator is presented in Section 4.6.]; and
c) a pulser subsystem that computes a control signal, based on the polynomial coefficients, that causes the imaging array to send an imaging signal [[pg. 89] beamformer can be housed in one standard FPGA, which can easily be programmed and upgraded. Combined with a simple analog front end, the whole design can be implemented by three chips (one of them containing the transmit amplifiers); [ref 4] [4] P. R. Stepanishen. Pulsed transmit/receive response of ultrasonic piezoelectric transducers. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 69:1815–1827, 1981.].
Regarding claim 7, Tomov teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the delays of a first group of elements are computed based on a second group of elements [[pg. 4] all elements are used together and beam steering is performed by properly delaying the transmissions on the different elements. With the introduction of multi-element transducers, electronic focusing became necessary.].
Regarding claim 8, Tomov teaches the system of claim 7, wherein elements of the first group are adjacent elements of the second group of elements [[pg. 4] all elements are used together and beam steering is performed by properly delaying the transmissions on the different elements. With the introduction of multi-element transducers, electronic focusing became necessary.].
Regarding claim 9, Tomov teaches the system of claim 7, wherein the delays of the first group of elements are computed by adding a first derivative of the delays to delays of the second group of elements [[pg. 101] adder adds the slope to the current delay on each clock cycle. When the segment counter reaches the end of the current segment, new segment length and slope are loaded. The focusing data is represented by an initial sample index and pairs of slope and length for each segment. Delta encoding can be used for the slope information and the segment length, and is used in our study.].
Regarding claim 19, Tomov teaches a method comprising:
a) generating, by an imaging array, an imaging signal [[sec. 1.5][pg. 4]];
b) computing, by a delay computation subsystem, delays based on polynomial coefficients of a polynomial that computes the delays, the delays being delays between signals sent by elements of the imaging array [[pg. 116][pg. 35]]; and
c) computing, by a pulser subsystem, based on the polynomial, coefficients a control signal that causes the imaging array to send an imaging signal [ref 4] [4] P. R. Stepanishen. Pulsed transmit/receive response of ultrasonic piezoelectric transducers. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 69:1815–1827, 1981.].
Regarding claim 20, Tomov teaches the method of claim 18, further comprising detecting, by a switching subsystem, a signal received by the imaging array [[pg. 27, sec. 3.4 beamforming techniques] introduction of multi-element transducers allowed better focusing in receive. By switching delay lines, several receive foci can be formed].
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.
Claim 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tomov (2003, Technical Information Center of Denmark) and Teo (US 6,168,564 B1).
Regarding claim 21, Tomov teaches a system, comprising:
an imaging array that generates an imaging signal [[sec. 1.5][pg. 4]]; a decompression subsystem that computes delays based on polynomial coefficients of a polynomial that computes the delays, the delays being delays between a signal sent by the imaging array [[pg. 35][pg. 95-96, sec. general parametric approach][pg. 116]], and wherein at least one of:
the delays are computed by inserting position coordinates of an element of the imaging array into the polynomial, the delay being applied to the element [[pg. 22-23] according to the convention adopted by the Center for Fast Ultrasound imaging, the coordinate system has its origin at the middle of the transducer array, the axis x is along the array and the; [sec 3.2. focusing] axis z points in depth, perpendicular to the array surface. In most imaging modalities used nowadays, and throughout this dissertation, the beam origin is at the middle of the transducer and coincides with the origin of the coordinate system. A receiving element close to the focal point projection on the transducer surface receives the echoes earlier than a more distant one. Therefore, the alignment of the echo signals requires delaying of some sensor signals with respect to other by means of inverse binary tree or delay lines.];
the delays are computed by interpolating the coefficients [[sec. 7.3 apodization] linear interpolation should be combined with look-up table so that finer apodization profiles can be achieved.];
the delays of a first group of elements are computed based on a second group of elements;
the polynomial computes delays of a group of elements in which the delays vary at an amount that is less than a threshold value;
the delays of a first row of elements are computed based at least in part on a second row of elements;
the delays of a first column of elements are computed based on a second column of elements; or
the delays are computed from the polynomial coefficients by successively numerically integrating higher order derivatives of the polynomial to derive lower order derivatives of the polynomial until the delay value for a given point is arrived at by numerically integrating a first-order derivative of the polynomial;
a pulser subsystem that computes a control signal, based on the polynomial coefficients, that causes the imaging array to send an imaging signal [[pg. 89]]; and a switching subsystem that detects a signal received by the imaging array [[ref. 4]].
Tomov does not explicitly teach and yet Teo teaches wherein the polynomial is bicubic or quadratic [[abstract] delay profile may be implemented by delay lines … quadratic portion of a beam forming equation is implemented in a beam former to control focus of the elements of the active aperture at each position of the active aperture].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to represent the delay profile as taught by Tomov, with the quadratic delay profile as taught by Teo so that a curve may be expressed by representative equations (Teo) [[abstract]].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 10-14 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.
Regarding claim 10, Tomov (2004) teaches first derivatives [[sec. 2.2] connection between delays and channel weights; [pgs. 262-263 bridging]]. However, Tomov (2004) does not appear to teach the system of claim 9, wherein the first derivatives of the delays are computed by adding second derivatives of the delays to prior values of the first derivatives.
Regarding claim 11, the closest prior art Tomov (2004) does not appear to teach the system of claim 9, wherein derivatives of a first order of the delays are computed by adding derivatives of a second order of derivative of the delays to prior values of the first order of derivatives, the second-order being one degree higher than the first order.
Regarding claim 12, the closest prior art Tomov (2004) does not appear to teach the system of claim 11, wherein if a derivative of a particular order is a constant or zero, no higher derivatives of the derivative of the particular order are computed when computing the delays of the first group.
Regarding claim 13, the closest prior art Tomov (2004) does not appear to teach the system of claim 11, wherein the coefficients are computed from delay values of a group of elements that includes a smaller number of elements than are computed by the polynomial.
Regarding claim 14, the closest prior art Tomov (2004) does not appear to teach the system of claim 9, wherein elements of the first group are adjacent elements of the second group.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JONATHAN D ARMSTRONG whose telephone number is (571)270-7339. The examiner can normally be reached M - F 9am-5pm.
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/JONATHAN D ARMSTRONG/ Examiner, Art Unit 3645
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