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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 09/12/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1-2, 4-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harra (U.S. Publication 20100072386) in view of Green (U.S. Patent 6229310).
Regarding claim 1, Harra teaches a portable and battery powered (fig. 4C (440) “some scanning applications may require an embodiment to be contained within a small, handheld, battery-powered unit that performs a limited application and only requires minimal processing, memory and data handling capabilities (See FIG. 6 for an example of such a device” [0047]) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) apparatus (“Magnetic resonance imaging (also known as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy)” [0005]), comprising:
a housing (fig. 4C 441) configured to receive a sample vessel (“The scanning apparatus consists of a cylindrical housing 441 to provide enclosure and to provide a magnetic field around the nodes and the sample in addition to RF and/or magnetic shielding” [0067, 74]), the housing comprising:
a magnetic assembly (fig. 4C 450) comprising an open cylindrical hole (fig. 4C 442) positioned in a center axis of the magnetic assembly (fig. 4C magnets 450 surrounding the sample received in opening 442 [0069]);
an antenna assembly comprising two antenna directors that extend into the open cylindrical hole and are configured to receive the sample vessel (fig. 4C 446, 448 in 442), wherein the two antenna directors collectively form two halves of a antenna array with a gap existing between each half of the array and which have a center axis that is substantially co-aligned with the center axis of the magnetic assembly (antennas 446, 447 aligned about the center axis of the magnets 450 with a gap between 446,447 fig. 4C [0073]), wherein when the sample vessel is inserted into the housing, the sample vessel is positioned within the antenna array and the open cylindrical hole (opening in 441 to place test tube fig. 4C [0069, 74]);
transmitter circuitry (fig. 1 (18)) operative to radiate an electromagnetic (EM) signal, via the antenna assembly (fig. 4C via 446,447), to a sample contained in the sample vessel (electromagnetic radiation to sample [0051, 74, 76]);
receiver circuitry (fig. 1 (20)) operative to receive, via the antenna assembly (fig. 4C via 446,447), re-radiated EM energy emanating from the sample as NMR data (“one or more transmission nodes 22 are connected to the transmitter 18 and used to transmit the electromagnetic radiation and one or more receiver nodes 24 are connected to the receiver to receive the electromagnetic radiation once it has been transmitted through or reflected by the sample,”[0005, 51, 76]); and
control circuitry (fig. 1 (16) operative to store a digital version of the NMR data in memory (fig. 1 (14) [0047-48]).
Harra does not explicitly teach the array antenna is a hollow columnar.
However, Green in a relevant field teaching non-invasively scanning and analyzing one or more characteristics of a sample utilizing electromagnetic radiation teaches the array antenna is a hollow columnar (fig. 8 (310)).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate hollow antennae of Green in Harra to gain the advantage of an RF transmitting antenna and transmitting antenna mounting structure which minimizes parasitic capacitance between the antenna and the magnet structure ([Green [col. 3 lines 5-10]).
Regarding claim 2, Harra as modified further teaches an orientation of the two antenna directors (fig. 4C, 446,447) is arranged such that an electric field generated by the antenna array is substantially orthogonal to a magnetic field provided by the magnet assembly (“By having the magnets placed along the base, instead of along one of the side walls as illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 3, it results in the magnetic field being perpendicular to the electric field, the electric field generated by the signals being transmitted from the transmitter nodes to the receiver nodes. Such arrangement improves the amount of energy absorbed by the tested sample, and consequently improves the accuracy of the resulting readings. As previously noted, magnets may not always be necessary” [0072-73]).
Regarding claim 4, Harra as modified further teaches a motor assembly configured to rotate the sample vessel during a sample event ([0098]).
Regarding claim 5, communications circuitry operative to transmit the NMR data stored in the memory to a remote device that processes the NMR data through a data analysis engine (fig. 1 memory 14 and fig. 6 central server 602) to determine whether the sample contains a marker or markers of interest (“a diagnostic result” [0119-120]).
Regarding claim 6, Harra further teaches a battery [0047]; wherein the transmitter circuitry (fig. 1 (18)) comprises: and a spread spectrum oscillator operative to provide a resonant frequency for the EM transmission event (transmitter generating electromagnetic radiation across a broad spectrum and performing frequency sweeps between about 1Mhz and 20 Ghz [0048], thereby teaching oscillator operative to provide selectable excitation frequencies for EM transmission events).
Harra does not explicitly teach power supply circuitry coupled to the battery and operative to boost a battery supply voltage to an antenna excitation voltage for an EM transmission event.
However Green teaching magnetic resonance excitation system in which “powerful radio frequency (RF) signals are broadcast into subject receiving space” (col. 2 lines 5-30). Thus, teaching RF excitation circuitry designed to generate sufficient excitation field strength at the antenna to induce magnetic resonance, which inherently requires appropriate RF power conditioning to achieve required excitation voltage levels.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Harra’s battery powered portable transmitter with Green’s RF excitation teachings to include conventional power supply circuitry capable of boosting battery voltage to the antenna excitation voltage necessary for magnetic resonance excitation such modification would have been made to gain the advantage of delivering sufficient RF excitation field strength while maintaining Harra’s portable battery powered architecture improving excitation performance.
Regarding claim 7, Harra further teaches wherein the control circuitry is operative (fig. 1 (10)) to:
Harra does not explicitly teach control power on and power off sequencing of the transmitter circuitry and the receiver circuitry; control first switch sequencing to connect and disconnect the antenna assembly to the transmitter circuitry; and control second switch sequencing to connect and disconnect the antenna assembly to the receiver circuitry.
However, Green teaches a magnetic resonance apparatus in which RF excitation signals are applied by a transmitter and magnetic resonance signals are received thereafter. Further teaches that “powerful radio frequency signals” are applied for excitation (col. 1 lines 5-50, col. 2 lines 1-40) and that the receiver must be disconnected during transmission to protect it (col. 3 lines 5-45). Further teaches that the local antenna is connected to the receiver during reception and disconnected during transmission via switching circuitry (col. 3 lines 5-45), thereby teaching transmit/receive switch sequencing between antenna, transmitter and receiver.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Harra’s transmitter /receiver system to incorporate Greens’ T/R switching control to gain the advantage of properly sequencing excitation and reception phases and protecting receiver circuitry from high power transmission.
Claims 3, 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harra (U.S. Publication 20100072386), Green (U.S. Patent 6229310) as applied to the rejection of claim 1 above and further in view of Ryan (U.S. Publication 20170325710).
Regarding claim 3, Harra as modified by Green does not explicitly teach wherein the magnet assembly is a Halbach Array.
However, Ryan teaches a Halbach magnet configuration for generating a primary magnetic field in a small form factor NMR. Specifically, Ryan teaches “an array of magnets in a Halbach configuration” [0045].
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the magnet assembly of Harra/Green with using the Halbach array configuration of Ryan to gain the advantage of producing strong spatially confined magnetic field with a compact geometry suitable to portable NMR application.
Regarding claim 8, Harra as modified by Green does not explicitly teach the magnet assembly comprises a magnetic field ranging between 1.4 Tesla and 3.0 Tesla, and wherein the EM signal comprises up to one kilowatt of energy.
However, Ryan teaches the magnet assembly comprises a magnetic field ranging between 1.4 Tesla and 3.0 Tesla, and wherein the EM signal comprises up to one kilowatt of energy (“portable NMR spectrometer tailored to a specific application (e.g., hydration monitoring) capable of measuring NMR signals at low magnetic field strength (e.g., 0.025-1.4 Tesla)” [0023, 0045]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Harra/ Greens’ system to incorporate the magnetic field of Ryan to gain the advantage of producing strong spatially confined magnetic field with a compact geometry suitable to portable NMR application.
Regarding claim 17, the structure recited is intrinsic to the method recited in claim 1, as disclosed by Harra (U.S. Publication 20100072386) in view of Green (U.S. Patent 6229310) as the recited structure will be used during the normal operation of the method, as discussed above with regard to claim 1 Harra as modified by Green does not explicitly teach an application operating on a device communicatively coupled to receive the transmitted NMR data from the portable and battery powered NMR apparatus and configured to transform the NMR data to transformed NMR data, analyze the transformed NMR data in accordance with at least one template and display analysis results thereof, wherein each template defines how a correlation engine evaluates the transformed NMR data to assess whether a template target exists in the sample.
However Ryan an application operating on a device communicatively coupled to receive the transmitted NMR data from the portable and battery powered NMR apparatus (receiving digital NMR data from a portable NMR apparatus and transforming it to frequency domain representation using Fourier transform [0033])) and configured to transform the NMR data to transformed NMR data ([0033]), analyze the transformed NMR data in accordance with at least one (data processing to determine a metabolic state, such as hydration and generating metrics and visualization including risk score [0033-34]) and display analysis results thereof (“At least some of the processed data may be returned to the software application executing on the network-connected device which may present one or more metrics, graphs, or other visualizations based on the processed data” [0033]), wherein each defines how a correlation engine evaluates the transformed NMR data to assess whether a target exists in the sample (data processing to determine a metabolic state, such as hydration and generating metrics and visualization including risk score [0033-34])). Although Ryan does not explicitly use the term “template”, its disclosure of predefined processing routines for assessing specific metabolic states e.g. hydration monitoring, inherently teaches processing in accordance with a predefined analysis configuration directed to a specific target condition. Such analyses routines correspond to a “template” focusing analysis on a particular metabolic condition. It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement Ryan’s predefined metabolic analysis routines as configurable analysis templates in order to modularize processing for different target conditions, to analyze transformed NMR data according to predefined templates directed to specific target conditions in order to improve diagnostic specificity and allow the system to evaluate samples for different metabolic or compositional markers using tailored evaluation criteria.
Claims 9-10, 12-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ryan (U.S. Publication 20170325710).
Regarding claim 9, Ryan teaches a method for processing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data of a sample, the method implemented in a computer device (“the received NMR signal is amplified through a multi-stage system of low noise amplification circuitry,.. Spectrometer 220 also includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) 234 configured to convert the analog downmixed signal to a digital signal for processing by microcontroller unit 224” [0033, 0042]), the method comprising:
receiving digital NMR data from a portable NMR apparatus (receiving digital NMR data from a portable NMR apparatus and transforming it to frequency domain representation using Fourier transform [0033]);
transforming the digital NMR data to transformed NMR data receiving digital NMR data from a portable NMR apparatus and transforming it to frequency domain representation using Fourier transform [0033]);
processing the transformed NMR data through a data analysis engine in accordance with a template that focuses analysis of the transformed NMR data to a template specific target existing in the sample (data processing to determine a metabolic state, such as hydration and generating metrics and visualization including risk score [0033-34]); and
displaying results of the processing in accordance with a display descriptor associated with the template (“At least some of the processed data may be returned to the software application executing on the network-connected device which may present one or more metrics, graphs, or other visualizations based on the processed data” [0033]).
Although Ryan does not explicitly use the term “template”, its disclosure of predefined processing routines for assessing specific metabolic states e.g. hydration monitoring, inherently teaches processing in accordance with a predefined analysis configuration directed to a specific target condition. Such analyses routines correspond to a “template” focusing analysis on a particular metabolic condition.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement Ryan’s predefined metabolic analysis routines as configurable analysis templates in order to modularize processing for different target conditions, to analyze transformed NMR data according to predefined templates directed to specific target conditions in order to improve diagnostic specificity and allow the system to evaluate samples for different metabolic or compositional markers using tailored evaluation criteria.
Regarding claim 10, Ryan further teaches wherein the transformed NMR data exists in an internal format; and wherein the processing further comprises correlating the transformed NMR data with a database to generate results for the template specific target (monitoring subject data over time and generating risk scores based on processed metabolic information [0033-34], such trend monitoring and risk scoring comparison of processed data with stored historical data or reference information maintained on the network connected system).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement Ryan’s server side analysis using stored reference datasets or historical subject records in order to improve accuracy and reliability of the analysis by comparing measured signal characteristics against previously collected data patterns.
Regarding claim 12, Ryan further teaches the results to a historical database to determine trends for the template specific target existing in the sample (time resolved monitoring of a subject and tracking global trends associated with changes in health status [0023, 0028] tracking trends over time necessarily involved storing prior results and comparing current results to previously stored data, which constitutes comparison to a historical database).
Regarding claim 13, Ryan further teaches wherein the template is one of a plurality of templates that provide descriptors for a plurality of template specific targets (device may be tailored to specific application and metabolic conditions [0028, 0033] providing a plurality of selectable analysis configurations (i.e. templates) to support different target conditions represents routine modularization of digital diagnostic processing).
Regarding claim 14, wherein the processing comprises generating and displaying results for each of the plurality of templates (tailoring processing to specific metabolic conditions and presenting processed results via a display or network connected device [0028, 0033] once a plurality of analysis routines (templates) corresponding to different metabolic target is provided, generating and displaying results for each routine represents a predictable and routine extension of Ryan’s disclosed digital processing and visualization architecture. Displaying multiple sets of processed results is a straightforward implementation choice in modular diagnostic software system).
Regarding claim 15, Ryan further teaches enabling a user to download or purchase a new template to be applied to the transformed NMR data (processing may occur on a network connected device using software applications tailored to specific metabolic monitoring functions [0028, 0033]).
Regarding claim 16, Ryan further teaches the template specific target is a specific metabolic condition, a specific compound, or a specific element (monitoring hydration state, which is metabolic condition associated with water content [0026-28]).
Claims 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ryan (U.S. Publication 20170325710) and further in view of Wang (US 20020083060).
Regarding claim 11, Ryan further teaches the transformed NMR data exists in an data format; and wherein the processing further comprises: using an processor to identify words in the transformed NMR data based on a language descriptor associated with the template; scoring the identified words based on a language/score descriptor associated with the template; creating the scored words based on descriptor associated with the template; and converting the to a displayable representation based on the display descriptor (acquiring NMR signal from a sample, converting the detected signals to digital data, and processing the digital signals using digital circuity to analyze characteristics of the sample [0042] therefore teaching acquisition and digital processing).
Ryan does not explicitly teach identifying signal components using finger prints based recognition techniques.
Wang discloses systems and methods for recognizing audio signals by extracting characteristics features and gathering fingerprints representing signal. In particular, teaching capturing a signal sample, computing landmarks and fingerprints representing features of the signal, retrieving matching fingerprints, and identifying a corresponding media file based on the matched fingerprints [0039-41]. Wang further explains that fingerprints summarize features of the signal at particular locations and maybe generated using signal processing techniques such as spectral analysis [0049, 55-56].
Both Ryan and Wand address the problem of identifying patterns withing digital signal using feature extraction and pattern recognition techniques. It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed to modify Ryan’s signal processing system to incorporate Wang’s finger print based recognition technique in order to improve identification and classification patterns using feature extraction and fingerprint recognitions that enable efficient matching of signal features.
Examiner note: The terms “words”, “language descriptor”, and related terminology are reasonably interpreted as identifiers and descriptors of signal features within the transformed signal data rather than requiring literal speech recognition. accordingly, identifying signal features and evaluating those features during matching correspond to identifying and scoring “words” and generating fingerprints within the meaning of the claim.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Grisworld (U.S. Publication 20150316634) discloses Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Fingerprinting with Parallel Transmission.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TAQI R NASIR whose telephone number is (571)270-1425. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM EST M-F.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lee Rodak can be reached at (571) 270-5628. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/TAQI R NASIR/Examiner, Art Unit 2858
/LEE E RODAK/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2858