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 § 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.
Claims 1-3, 12-13, and 17-18, and 22-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eifrig et al. EP0863637 (hereinafter “Eifrig”) in view of Li et al. US 2010/0161523.
Regarding claim 1, Eifrig discloses a method for encoding data defining an image (see page 2 lines 54-56, a method for coding spatial transform coefficients of a current, INTRA coded block in a digital video image), the method comprising the steps of:- segmenting the image into image blocks, the image blocks having a uniform block size (page 5, lines 37-40, number of macroblocks which are coded individually using an intra-frame mode or an inter-frame mode, see figure 3); applying a frequency-based transform to each of the image blocks, thereby providing transformed image data in which the image data is represented as coefficients defining a linear combination of predetermined basis functions having different spatial frequencies (page 5, lines 34-36, apply Discrete Cosine Transform);- quantising the coefficients (page 5, lines 40-42, quantized prediction coefficients); and converting the quantised coefficients into binary code (page 5, lines 5-10, intra and inter entropy coding).
Eifrig does not explicitly disclose wherein the step of converting the quantised coefficients into binary code comprises applying binary arithmetic coding using a probability model, and wherein the probability model is tailored based on a sample set of representative images.
Li discloses using probability tables with arithmetic coding in data compression systems (see paragraph 0001) and teaches using probability tables that have been trained in a specific compression category in order to improve the performance of arithmetic coding (see paragraph 0013). This is further shown in figure 5A where quantizing into binary code is carried out based on probability table generated from sampling a plurality of data sets for a particular compression category (see paragraph 0036-0042).
Eifrig and Li are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of encoding data.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Eifrig and Li to apply binary arithmetic coding using a probably model that is based on a sample set of representative images as taught by Li. The motivation would be to improve the compression performance.
Regarding claim 2, Li teaches wherein the probability model is selected from a number of tailored probability models, each of the number of tailored probability models being tailored based on a sample set of representative images for a particular image modality (see figure 5a).
Regarding claim 3, Li discloses wherein each block of transformed image data comprises one coefficient for a zero frequency basis function, and a plurality of coefficients for higher frequency basis functions, which plurality of coefficients for higher frequency basis functions are grouped into one or more sub-bands, each sub-band consisting of a number of coefficients (see page 5, lines 34-36).
Regarding claim 12, Eifrig discloses the frequency based transform is a discrete cosine transform (Eifrig page 5, lines 34-36).
Regarding claim 13, Li discloses encoding or decoding as the inverse of encoding (see paragraph 0012, either arithmetic encoding or decoding on a data set in the particular compression category).
Regarding claim 17, Eifrig as discussed above discloses encoding video (page 2 lines 54-56).
Claim 18 is similarly analyzed to claim 1.
Claims 22-23 are similarly analyzed to claim 1.
Claims 6-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eifrig in view of Li and further in view of Liang et al. Optimal Block Boundary Pre/post-filtering for Wavelet-Based Image and Video Compression (hereinafter “Liang”, cited in the IDS).
Regarding claim 6, as discussed above Eifrig and Li disclose the limitations of claim 1. Eifrig nor Li do not explicitly disclose applying a pre-filter prior to applying the frequency-based transform, the pre-filter being applied to a group of pixels, and the group of pixels spanning a boundary between two image blocks.
Liang discloses applying a pre-filter prior to applying the frequency-based transform, the pre-filter being applied to a group of pixels, and the group of pixels spanning a boundary between two image blocks (see section 3 where superior energy compaction is preserved and provides identical boundary processing to both blocks to reduce reconstruction errors).
Eifrig, Li and Liang are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of encoding data.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to apply a pre-filter prior to applying the frequency-based transform, the pre-filter being applied to a group of pixels, and the group of pixels spanning a boundary between two image blocks to the invention of Eifrig. The motivation would be to reduce reconstruction errors.
Regarding claim 7, although not explicitly disclosed it would be an obvious design choice to make the group of pixels the same size as an image block as this would enable conforming to the size already used.
Regarding claim 8, Liang discloses wherein the pre-filter is determined at least in part by an adaptation process based on a set of selected images (see section 3).
Claims 19-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eifrig in view of Li and further in view of Thibeault et al. US 10,824,871 (hereinafter “Thibeault”).
Regarding claims as discussed Eifrig and Li disclose limitations of claim 1. Eifrig nor Li do not explicitly disclose a remote platform to capture images, encode the images and transfer the images and decode the images at a user terminal, however this is a common use of compressed images.
Thibeault discloses a compression system for images that can be implemented in a variety of systems including unmanned air vehicles that do not have large computational resources (see col. 6 line 65- col. 7 line 19).
Eifrig, Li and Thibeault are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of image encoding.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Eifrig, Li, with Thibeault to use the procedure in the environment of an unmanned vehicle to. capture an image at a remote sensor, encode the image, transmit the image to a user terminal and decode the image at the user terminal. The motivation would be compressing the images to take advantage of smaller computational resources.
Regarding claim 20 Thibeault discloses wherein the remote platform is an unmanned air system (see col. 6 line 65- col. 7 line 19).
Regarding claim 21, although not explicitly disclosed it would be obvious to use the encoding system for a missile platform that need to process images as it is an obvious design choice for the encoding system.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-5, 9-11, and 14-16 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN B STREGE whose telephone number is (571)272-7457. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5 (PST).
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/JOHN B STREGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2669
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