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 § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 1, the subject matter recited in claim 1 renders the claim indefinite because of the following reasons:
i) The limitation “the plurality of sub-images that are selected using the plurality of sub-image scores” lacks antecedent basis.
ii) The limitation “a plurality of sub-image scores generated from a subset of the plurality of sub-images” is inconsistent with the applicant’s specification. The applicant’s specification [78]-[80] rather specifies that the sub-image scores are generated for all of the sub-images first, from which some sub-image scores are selected (i.e., all scores calculated first for all sub-images and then selecting a portion), while the claim limitation indicates the scores are generated from selective sub-images (i.e., selecting a portion of sub-images first and then calculating scores from the selected sub-images only), which is misleading.
iii) It is unclear and confusing how such “global score” is calculated or what it clearly represents. The applicant’s specification para [29] describes that such global score may possibly be a wide range of subjective quantifications, such as “a risk correlated with prognosis (e.g. a survival rate, a survival expectancy, etc.), a risk score correlated with response to a treatment (i.e. the probability of a treatment to be effective, a variation of expectancy, etc.), or any significant parameter for diagnosis”, however, does not provide any detail as to how such scores are calculated from sub-image scores that merely indicate image patterns. Consequently, the metes and bounds of the invention would have been unclear to one of ordinary skill in the art.
Each of the above reasons similarly applies to claim 8. Please amend the claims for clarification.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Veidman et al. (US 2020/0372635).
Regarding claim 1, Veidman discloses:
extracting a plurality of feature vectors for a plurality of sub-images by applying a convolutional neural network (see para [156], [180], [185], [188], and fig 1 (step 114), patch-level classifier extracting a probability vector for each of a plurality of patches of a whole slide image (WSI) by applying a convolutional neural network (CNN) to each of the patches); and
processing the plurality of extracted feature vectors of the plurality of sub-images to obtain the global score of the input image by classifying the input image using a plurality of sub-image scores generated from a subset of the plurality of sub-images and the extracted feature vectors (see para [176], [178], [195], [197], [210], and fig 1, processing the feature vectors of the patches to obtain a biopsy-level analysis of the WSI by classifying the WSI using a plurality of location metrics generated for in-focus patches and the probability vectors),
wherein the classification generates the global score for the input image (see para [210], the classification of the WSI generates the biopsy-level analysis) and
the subset of the plurality of sub-images has a smaller number of sub-images than the plurality of sub-images that are selected using the plurality of sub-image scores (see para [176], [178], [197], wherein the in-focus patches are fewer in number than the overall patches).
Regarding claim 8, Veidman discloses everything claimed as applied above (see rejection of claim 1).
Allowable Subject Matter
The prior art of record does not disclose the subject matter recited in claims 2-7, 9, and 10. These claims would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims and further amended to overcome the 112(b) rejection stated above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SJ PARK whose telephone number is (571)270-3569. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM.
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/SJ Park/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2675
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