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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 1-7 and 14 in the reply filed on 09/03/2026 is acknowledged.
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, 6-7, 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lee et al. (WO2021054700) in view of Do et al. (KR20220005873).
To claim 1, Lee teach a dental lesion information visualization method performed by a computing system, comprising the steps of:
inputting data on a panoramic image of a patient's oral cavity to a machine-learned lesion analysis model (paragraphs 0041-0042, wherein dental lesion in Lee would be interpreted as cavity, as a well-known int the art, Official Notice is taken);
determining a region of interest that contains a lesion in the panoramic image by using data output by the lesion analysis model (paragraphs 0043-0044); and
overlaying and displaying an indicator pointing to the region of interest on the panoramic image (Fig. 4; paragraphs 0046, 0078, visualizing detected lesion area).
But, Lee do not expressly disclose searching for a computed tomography (CT) image of the patient's oral cavity in response to user selection input on an indicator; executing a CT imaging module in response to determining that the CT image of the patient's oral cavity is not present based on the search result.
Do teach dental lesion detection method comprising: automatically detecting dental lesions through acquired dental CT images and storing lesion history in a PI list, wherein stored lesion history can be searched for display by user (paragraphs 0037-0042).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate teaching of Do into the method of Lee, in order to provide user operation.
To claim 14, Lee and Do teach a dental lesion information visualization system (as explained in response to claim 1 above, wherein Figs. 6-7 Do teach displaying the lesion detection list together with the panoramic image).
To claim 6, Lee and Do teach claim 1.
Lee and Do teach further comprising the step of displaying the CT image of the patient's oral cavity in response to the user selection input on the indicator (Do, Fig. 8, paragraphs 0075-0076).
To claim 7, Lee and Do teach claim 6.
Lee and Do teach wherein the step of displaying the CT image of the patient's oral cavity comprises the step of displaying the CT image with a field of view (FoV) initially set based on a location of the region of interest (Do, Figs. 8-31).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-5 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 ZHIYU LU whose telephone number is (571)272-2837. The examiner can normally be reached Weekdays: 8:30AM - 5:00PM.
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ZHIYU . LU
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2669
/ZHIYU LU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2665 September 14, 2026
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