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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/28/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive in part. Claims 1-17 and 20 are allowed as amended. However, claims 18-19 stands rejected under 101. The 101 rejection of claim 20 has been overcome by amendment.
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.
Regarding claim 1:
Claims 18-19 are directed to idea of itself (abstract idea). The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the following reason(s):
Step 1: Claim 1 The claim is directed to a "method," which is one of the four statutory categories (process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter).
Step 2A, the claims are Mathematical Concepts or Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity / Mental Steps. It takes data (attenuation values), divides them into intervals (sorting), applies a mapping function/slope (math formulas), and outputs new numbers. Cases like Electric Power Group establish that collecting, analyzing, and displaying information is abstract.
Step 2B, the additional limitations left in use generic data processing actions ("dividing," "adjusting," "obtaining"). Merely executing an abstract mathematical manipulation on a generic computer or applying it to a specific field (medical imaging) does not supply the "inventive concept" required to transform the claim. Thus, claims 18-19 as a whole is not significantly more than the abstract idea itself and is ineligible and could be a computer program.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-17, and 20 are allowed. Claims 18-19 are allowed, however they still have to overcome the 101 rejection above of a significantly more rejection. Segmenting a medical image specifically based on "different registration requirement accuracies" (e.g., vital organs requiring sub-millimeter precision vs. background tissue requiring loose alignment) was not found in the prior art. Further having a rigid rule specifying that the similar weight of a single element (voxel/pixel) has a direct positive correlation to the accuracy requirement of the zone it resides in. Then dynamically altering the loss function's similarity term per element based on this distribution to directly tune how hard the optimizer works on that specific spot to generate the deformation field. In conclusion, defining an element-level similarity weight distribution that is positively correlated with region-specific accuracy requirements represents a specific, targeted solution was not found in the prior art.
A close prior art that could have also been a reference and to consider when amending is, Fan (US 2020/0074626) ¶[0033] “Different from conventional multi resolution image registration algorithms in which deformation fields at lower-resolutions are typically used as initialization inputs to image registration at a higher spatial resolution, the disclosed example deep learning based method may jointly optimize deformation fields at all spatial resolutions with a typical feedforward and backpropagation based deep learning setting.”
Zavesky (US 2023/0402158) ¶[0026] “The techniques, VAMC, and VAs described herein also can enhance accuracy with regard to medical information and records, and other information, and can assist the patient in recalling specific times and events by precise recall (e.g., by the VA) of situation-specific desires (e.g., wants, needs, or requirements) of EMR details or other details associated with the patient.”
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/SANTIAGO GARCIA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2673
/SG/
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