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 § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
The USPTO recognizes that applicants may have claims directed to computer readable media that cover signals per se, which the USPTO must reject under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as covering both non-statutory subject matter and statutory subject matter. In an effort to assist the patent community in overcoming a rejection or potential rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in this situation, the USPTO suggests the following approach.
A claim drawn to such a computer readable medium that covers both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by adding the limitation "non-transitory" to the claim. Cf. Animals - Patentability, 1077 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 24 (April 21, 1987) (suggesting that applicants add the limitation "non-human" to a claim covering a multi-cellular organism to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101). Such an amendment would typically not raise the issue of new matter, even when the specification is silent because the broadest reasonable interpretation relies on the ordinary and customary meaning that includes signals per se. The limited situations in which such an amendment could raise issues of new matter occur, for example, when the specification does not support a non-transitory embodiment because a signal per se is the only viable embodiment such that the amended claim is impermissibly broadened beyond the supporting disclosure. See, e.g., Gentry Gallery, Inc. v. Berkline Corp., 134 F.3d 1473(Fed. Cir. 1998).
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter as follows. Claim 1 defines a “recording medium having embodied thereon a program” embodying functional descriptive material. However, the claim does not define a non-transitory computer-readable medium or memory and is thus non-statutory for that reason (i.e., “examination the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms reasonably allow). The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer readable medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations) typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent. See MPEP 2111.01.
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) 1-5, 8-10, 12, 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa (JP 2016054775 A) in view of Kamijo (US 2025/0134346 A1) and Endo (US 2022/0327702 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Ogawa teaches A medical assistance system comprising:
one or more processors comprising hardware (paragraph [0019]),
wherein the one or more processors are configured to:
acquire presence information indicating that there is a biopsy spot in an endoscopic image (paragraph [0013], [0031]-[0033]), site information indicating a site included in the endoscopic image (paragraphs [0025], [0029]), and a plurality of endoscopic images taken in one endoscopic examination (paragraphs [0014]);
provide a first mark indicating that a biopsy has been performed or a biopsy should be performed in the organ model image associated with the site indicated by the site information based on the presence information and the site information ((paragraph [0004], [0031]-[0033])); and (paragraph
when there are a plurality of the endoscopic images of a different biopsy spot in the same site ([0006], [0008], [0033], [0034]), determine positions of a plurality of first marks associated with the same site based on an imaging order ([0014]) [0018], [0029], [0041]).
display the organ model image provided with the plurality of the first marks (paragraphs [0004], [0018])
Ogawa fails to teach wherein an organ model image includes a plurality of subregions associated with a plurality of sites of an organ, and timing information indicating an imaging time of the endoscopic image for each of a plurality of endoscopic images;
and determine positions of a plurality of the first marks in the subregion.
However, Kamijo teaches timing information indicating an imaging time of the endoscopic image for each of a plurality of endoscopic images (paragraph [0037], [0038]);
Kamijo is considered analogous to the claimed invention as it is in the same field of endoscopic imaging. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Ogawa with Kamijo in order to specify the implementation of Ogawa’s endoscopic imaging system.
Ogawa in view of Kamijo fails to teach and determine positions of a plurality of the first marks in the subregion;
wherein an organ model image includes a plurality of subregions associated with a plurality of sites of an organ
However, Endo teaches and determine positions of a plurality of the first marks in the subregion (paragraphs [0078], [0079]); wherein an organ model image includes a plurality of subregions associated with a plurality of sites of an organ (figs 9-11, paragraph [0078], [0084]). Endo is considered analogous to the claimed invention as it is in the same field of endoscopic imaging. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Endo with Ogawa in view of Kamijo in order to better differentiate between areas of an organ that have been observed and those that have not been observed, in turn improving the user experience.
Regarding claim 2, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 1. Ogawa further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: provide a second mark indicating that a biopsy has been performed or a biopsy should be performed to the endoscopic image of the biopsy spot ([0004], [0028], [0031]).
Regarding claim 3, Ogawa in view of KamiJo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 2. Ogawa further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: receive a user operation of placing the second mark on the endoscopic image (paragraphs [0028]-[0031]); and provide the second mark on the endoscopic image according to the user operation (paragraphs [0031], [0034], [0036]).
Regarding claim 4, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 2. Ogawa further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: acquire the presence information and position information indicating the position of the biopsy spot based on the endoscopic image (paragraphs [0001], [0029] – while determined by the doctor, the position of a biopsy spot is still based on the endoscopic/examination image); and provide the second mark to the endoscopic image based on the presence information and the position information (paragraphs [0029], [0031]).
Regarding claim 5, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 1. Ogawa further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: acquire the site information based on the endoscopic image (paragraphs [0001], [0021], [0022], [0025], [0029] – site/examination information is based on an endoscopic image as determined by a doctor).
Regarding claim 8, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 2. Ogawa further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: display the organ model image provided with the first mark and the endoscopic image provided with the second mark at the same time (figs 4 & 5, paragraph [0030], [0032], [0033] – while a translation of the images is not available, the explanation of the figures’ markings show there are both first and second marks displayed at the same time.).
Regarding claim 9, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 2. Ogawa further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: display the endoscopic image provided with the second mark (figs 4 & 5, paragraph [0030], [0032], [0033]);
Kamijo teaches display the organ model image provided with the first mark of the endoscopic image (figs. 3-5, paragraph [0042] – the first mark provided in figs 3-5 is only shown on the organ model image, but is gleaned from the endoscopic examination process).
Endo teaches and upon receiving a user operation of switching a display image, display the organ model image in place of the endoscopic image (fig 8, 10A,10B, 11A-11D, paragraphs [0086], [0092]),
Regarding claim 10, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 1. Ogawa further teaches wherein the presence information includes information indicating that there is a spot to be biopsied or information indicating that there is already a biopsied spot (paragraphs [0013], [0022], [0025]).
Method claim 12 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 1. Therefore, the method claim 12 corresponds to the apparatus claim 1, and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used above.
Computer program claim 13 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 1. Therefore, the computer program claim 13 corresponds to the apparatus claim 1, and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used above.
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo and in further view of M. Odagawa et al., "Classification Method with CNN features and SVM for Computer-Aided Diagnosis System in Colorectal Magnified NBI Endoscopy," 2020 IEEE REGION 10 CONFERENCE (TENCON), Osaka, Japan, 2020, pp. 1095-1100, doi: 10.1109/TENCON50793.2020.9293709. (hereinafter “Odagawa”).
Regarding claim 6, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 5. Kamijo further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: input the endoscopic image into a trained model (paragraph [0062]) and acquire the site information output from the trained model (paragraphs [0067]-[0070] – the described feature information can be considered analogous to site information),
Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo fails to explicitly teach wherein the trained model is generated by machine learning using endoscopic images for learning and information indicating a site included in the endoscopic images as training data.
However, Odagawa teaches wherein the trained model is generated by machine learning using endoscopic images for learning (section III “NBI Magnified Endoscopic Image Data Set”) and information indicating a site included in the endoscopic images as training data (Section III, fig 8 – trains the model to classify the 3 different types of lesion types, the known lesion types of the data are analogous to information indicating a site).
Claim(s) 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo and in further view of Kubo (US 20230414064 A1) .
Regarding claim 7, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 1. Endo further teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: estimate a travel direction of an endoscope in the endoscopic examination (paragraphs [0022], [0083]) based on the site information and the timing information of each of the plurality of endoscopic images (paragraphs [0082], [0083]);
Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo fails to teach determine the position of the plurality of the first marks in the subregion based on the estimated travel direction.
However, Kubo teaches and determine the position of the plurality of the first marks in the subregion based on the estimated travel direction (paragraph [0059]). Kubo is considered analogous to the claimed invention as it is in the same field of endoscopic imaging. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Kubo with Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo in order to ensure the acquired position information of a mark is associated with actual position information of the detection target (abstract).
Claim(s) 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo and in further view of Nakamura (EP 4231314 A1).
Regarding claim 11, Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo teaches the medical assistance system according to claim 1.
Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo fail to teach wherein the one or more processors are configured to: determine positions of the plurality of the first marks such that the plurality of the first marks do not overlap in the subregion
However Nakamura teaches wherein the one or more processors are configured to: determine positions of the plurality of the first marks such that the plurality of the first marks do not overlap in the subregion (paragraph [0196], [0230]). Nakamura describes placing a mark on a position that does not overlap with a risk site, and support information superimposed on an image such that it doesn’t overlap with the risk site. While this doesn’t directly state a plurality of first marks, it does describe ensuring there is no overlap for multiple items superimposed on an image, one of these items being the mark. This is analogous to determining positions of a plurality of marks such that they do not overlap. Nakamura is considered analogous to the claimed invention as it is in the same field of medical image processing. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Nakamura with Ogawa in view of Kamijo and Endo in order allow a medical professional to clearly view a treatment portion without being disturbed by superimposed content, thus improving the user experience.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Dobrowolski (US 2016/0180561 A1)
Azizian (US 12440290 B2)
K. Gono, "Multifunctional Endoscopic Imaging System for Support of Early Cancer Diagnosis," in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 62-69, Jan.-feb. 2008, doi: 10.1109/JSTQE.2007.913966.
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/AIDAN W MCCOY/Examiner, Art Unit 2611
/TAMMY PAIGE GODDARD/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2611
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