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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/22/2024 has been considered by the examiner and made of record in the application file.
Note Regarding 35 USC § 101
Claim 7 discloses “[a] non-transitory computer-readable recording medium …”. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) precedential ruling in Sequoia Technology, LLC v. Dell, Inc. (available at: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2263.OPINION.4-12-2023_2109603.pdf) a “recording” is a “record” which is defined by Marriam-Websters’ online dictionary as follows: 1c. “to register permanently by mechanical means”; 3. “to cause (sound, visual images, data, etc.) to be registered in something (such as a disc or magnetic tape) in reproducible form”. Therefore, the permanent, reproducible nature of a “record” as indicated by the plain meaning weighs against interpretation as a transitory signal which is fleeting and does not persist over time. Therefore, since a “recording medium” is directed to statutory subject matter, a 35 USC § 101 rejection is not applied to claim 7.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 6, and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et al (“A Machine Learning Approach for Interactive Lesion Segmentation”) (Cited in IDS), in view of Moriya (JP 2008212396 A) (Cited in IDS) and Kimmel (US 6031935 A).
Regarding Claim 1, Li et al. teaches (Pg. 2: teaches a locating process based on a marker indicating a rough lesion location; further teaches providing a correct location when the initial segmentation is imperfect) predict a contour line near the target position (Pg. 2: teaches locating the tumor boundary based in the marker using a trained classifier)
Li et al. is silent on the remaining limitations of Claim 1. However, Moriya teaches an image processing apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory storing program instructions that cause the processor to… (¶0021: describes an image processor that retrieves and stores medical images.) Moriya further teaches based on a learned model that has learned a relationship between a position in an image and a contour line near the position. (¶41 and ¶59: teaches obtaining evaluation function F through machine learning using sample images having known contours and applying F to a discrimination region determined from point C to determine contour B)
Both Li et al. and Moriya are silent on the remaining limitations of Claim 1. However, Kimmel discloses output a training image indicating a prediction result of the contour line near the target position. (Col. 9 lines 26-38 and Col. 39 lines 24-26: teaches that a search image associated with a final segmentation contour may be added to a pool of training images, such that the search image is subsequently considered a training image. Further teaches that the final segmentation contour is used as a training contour for subsequent processing.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Li et al and Moriya to retain an image containing the determined segmentation contour as a training image and to use the determined contour as corresponding training information, as taught by Kimmel, thereby improving the efficiency of generating training data for subsequent image processing operations.
Regarding Claim 2, Li et al. teaches wherein the image processing apparatus repeatedly executes: acquiring the target image in which a new target position is indicated; and predicting the contour line near the new target position. (Pg. 2: teaches a fourth step used when the segmentation result is imperfect. In that step, based on a given correct location, we do the segmentation again and output a new satisfied result.)
Claim 6 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the apparatus claim recited in Claim 1. Therefore, the recited steps in this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding apparatus claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Li et al, Moriya, and Kimmel reference presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to this claim.
Claim 7 recites a CRM storing a program with instructions corresponding to the elements recited in Claim 1. Therefore, the recited programming instructions of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding apparatus claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Li et al, Moriya, and Kimmel references, presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to this claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 3-5 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RAVEN S. JONES whose telephone number is (571)272-7759. The examiner can normally be reached M-Th 7:00a.m. - 5:00p.m..
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/RAVEN SIMONE JONES/Examiner, Art Unit 2665
/Stephen R Koziol/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2665
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