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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Response to Preliminary Amendment
This Office Action is responsive to a preliminary amendment filed on 09/24/2024. Applicant submits the Specification has been amended to claim benefit of the priority applications. All claims have been amended to better define Applicants' contribution to the art, as well as to conform to current U.S. patent practice, including removing of reference numerals, correcting one or more informalities, and/or replacing European-style claim phraseology with U.S.-style claim language, without addressing any issues of patentability. Applicant submits no new matter is added. Claims 1-15 are pending in the instant application. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim. An Office Action on the merits follows here below.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 09/24/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 14 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) and/or (a)(2) as being anticipated by Goyal (US 20190117179 A1).
Regarding Claim 1: (Currently Amended) Goyal discloses a computer-implemented method of determining a value of a physical property of a thrombus (Refer to para [125]; “a method of deriving information about the location and properties of a blood clot/thrombus is provided…”), the method comprising: receiving X-ray image data comprising a temporal sequence of X-ray images (Refer to para [152]; “n contrast, in rotational angiography, as shown in FIG. 3b, the detector 183 is a large area detector, which is connected to the x-ray emitter 182 using a C-arm. In order to acquire a 3D image with C-Arm 185, the C-Arm is positioned at the body part in question so that this body part of the patient 100 is between the x-ray emitter 182 and the detector 183. The C-Arm 185 then rotates, the rotation 193 typically being between 200° and 360° (depending on the equipment manufacturer). Such a rotation takes between 2 and 20 seconds (e.g. 8 seconds), during which typically a few hundred 2D images are acquired. Software run on a computer processor then performs a cone beam reconstruction. The resulting voxel data can then be viewed as a multiplanar reconstruction, i.e. by scrolling through the slices from three projection angles, or as a 3D volume, which can be rotated and zoomed.”) representing an expansion of a stent of an intraluminal stent retriever device over the thrombus (Refer to para [279]; “The rotational angiography procedures allows for a quick determination of this length (and/or other dimensional parameters) which has implications in decision making such as choosing the length of the clot retrieving stents (e.g. stentriever length) at the time of the recanalization procedure.”) determining the value of the physical property of the thrombus based on a rate of expansion of the stent in the temporal sequence of X-ray images (Refer to para [128 and 168]; “the method includes the step of calculating a rate of change of contrast density within a blood clot/thrombus volume across different phases to a known rate of change of contrast density within a blood clot/thrombus volume to determine a blood clot/thrombus porosity. While the nurse is preparing the surgical site, the team sets up for a multiphase FDCT (Flat-detector Computed Tomography also known as Rotational Angiography) which can be performed using the same equipment as that used to rule out a hemorrhage (this means that the patient does not need to be moved). This takes another 2 minutes of data acquisition. This allows the medical team to determine: [0169] a. Evidence of a proximal vessel occlusion suitable for endovascular thrombectomy b. Evaluation of collateral maps using rate and extent of collateral filling.”) and outputting the value of the physical property (Refer to para [237]; “That is, to determine the rate of flow through a particular vessel, the system may be configured to determine the integrated contrast opacity along a particular vessel. This can be performed by adding up the opacity values of voxels associated with a particular vessel (and optionally subtracting the corresponding background voxel opacity values of the corresponding non-contrast scan). This can be displayed as the quantity of contrast as a function of length along the vessel.”).
Regarding Claim 14: Goyal discloses system for determining a value of a physical property of a thrombus, comprising one or more processors configured to carry out the steps of a computer-implemented method according to claim 1 (Refer to para [130]; “The methods disclosed herein may be implemented using a suitably configured computer processor in conjunction with memory (e.g. for storing a computer program and generated data) configured to control the rotational angiography machine and/or to process data received from a suitably configured rotational angiography machine.”).
Regarding Claim 15: Goyal discloses a projection X-ray imager for providing the temporal sequence of X-ray images (Refer to para [149]; “The multiphase rotational angiography procedure produces a series of time-sequenced or phases of scans of the brain that provide information about the flow of contrast through areas of the brain from which the quality of perfusion and the quality of collaterals can be assessed and/or calculated. In some embodiments, the flow of collaterals can be inferred using a single rotational angiography scan due to the time period to complete the sweep of the head.”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-13 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.
The prior art either singly or in combination does not teach, disclose or suggest at least the following claim limitation(s): “… determining the value of the physical property of the thrombus (comprises inputting a plurality of images from the temporal sequence into a neural network trained using training data comprising temporal sequences of training X-ray images, each such training sequence representing an expansion of a stent of an intraluminal stent retriever device over a thrombus having a known value for the physical property.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MIA M THOMAS whose telephone number is (571)270-1583. The examiner can normally be reached M-Th 8:30am-4:30pm.
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MIA M. THOMAS
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2665
/MIA M THOMAS/Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2665
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