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 .
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed on 7/13/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-11 remain pending the application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on 7/13/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive or are moot.
Applicant argues on pages 9-10 that Zhou does not disclose nonlinear processing for local peak extraction because it is merely filtering rather than the process performed by the Applicant’s invention as described in the specification. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. The claim limitations need not be so narrowly construed. Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). The broadest reasonable interpretation of claim limitations related to non-linear processing based on peak conditions reads on the non-linear filter described in Zhou because a person having ordinary skill in the art would understand that a non-linear filter is non-linear and filters based on peak conditions. Accordingly, this argument is not persuasive. If the Applicant wishes to require the more specific steps outlined in the specification and in their arguments, the claims should be amended to more specifically require these steps.
Applicant argues on pages 10-11 that Zhou fails to disclose the newly added limitations to the claims related to an index. This argument is moot in view of the new grounds of rejection necessitated by amendment which relies on Kim to disclose these limitations in the claims. Accordingly, this argument is moot.
Applicant argues on pages 11-12 that Zhou does not disclose the limitations in the claims related to exclusion of signals and accumulation of remaining signals because it does not follow the process performed by the Applicant’s invention as described in the specification. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. The claim limitations need not be so narrowly construed. Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A person having ordinary skill in the art would understand that applying a filter to an ultrasound signal would exclude certain signals and the remaining signals would be remain accumulated and combined to form a new filtered ultrasound signal. Therefore, the broadest reasonable interpretation of these claim limitations reads on Zhou. Accordingly, this argument is not persuasive. If the Applicant wishes to require the more specific steps outlined in the specification and in their arguments, the claims should be amended to more specifically require these steps.
Applicant argues on pages 12-15 that the fundamental underlying concept for the previously cited art is different than the invention described in the specification. However, the Examiner notes that these requirements are not found in the claims and the cited art reads on the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims. Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). Accordingly, this argument is not persuasive. If the Applicant wishes to require the more specific steps outlined in the specification and in their arguments, the claims should be amended to more specifically require these steps.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-11 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Regarding claims 1 and 10-11, the claims recite “calculating an index representing a frequency of appearance in the time direction or a variation in the time direction of the signal satisfying the local peak condition over the plurality of frames represented by the second ultrasonic signal data for identifying the inappropriate positions or inappropriate frames”. There is insufficient support for this limitation in the specification. Although there is support for determining conditions in a direction of interest in the specification [see 0184 of the published specification], there is no description of an index representing a frequency of appearance in the time direction or a variation in the time direction of the signal satisfying the local peak condition over the plurality of frames described in the specification, which is a much more specific that what is described in [0184]. Accordingly, these claims are rejected under 112a.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 2, the claim recites the limitation “the inappropriate position”. However, claim 1 recites an “inappropriate position in a frame or an inappropriate frame”. In other words, claim 1 only requires an inappropriate position in the alternate. Therefore, it is unclear what the claim requires when no inappropriate position is identified since it is not required by the claim.
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.
Claims 1-4 and 9-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhou et al. (US20250099080, hereafter Zhou) and Kim (US20120022372).
Regarding claims 1 and 10-11, Zhou discloses an ultrasound diagnostic apparatus, ultrasound diagnostic method, and imaging processing apparatus (Zhou, Para 5; “Systems and methods to suppress interference artifacts in ultrasound systems are described. In some embodiments, an ultrasound system includes an ultrasound scanner configured to transmit ultrasound at a patient anatomy and receive reflections of the ultrasound from the patient anatomy. The ultrasound system also includes an ultrasound machine configured to generate received data including ultrasound data based on the reflections of the ultrasound and artifact data based on an interferer.”) comprising:
a processing circuit configured to acquire first ultrasonic signal data representing a plurality of frames continuous in a time direction, the first ultrasonic signal data having been obtained by ultrasound scanning of a subject (Zhou, Para 39-40; “the ultrasound scanner transmits the ultrasound at a first frequency, and the processor system determines an artifact signal including to filter the received signal with a notch filter having a notch based on the first frequency. […] and filtering the received data for consecutive ultrasound image frames.”),
acquire second ultrasonic signal data representing a plurality of frames by extracting, from the first ultrasonic signal data, for each frame, a signal satisfying a local peak condition by nonlinear processing (Zhou, Para 63; "FIG. 4A depicts a view 400 illustrating a filter design diagram according to some embodiments. After the artifacts characteristics are determined, an artifact suppression filter is designed (block 401). The artifact suppression filter can include one or more of a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter, an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter, a linear filter, a nonlinear filter, or other artifact suppression filter.”),
identify an inappropriate position in a frame or an inappropriate frame (Zhou, Para 41; “The ultrasound system includes a processor system implemented to determine an artifact signal that is based on the interferer and determine, based on the artifact signal, artifact characteristics. As shown in FIG. 1 , the artifacts characteristics are calculated at block 103. In some embodiments, the artifact characteristics include one or more of an amplitude, a phase, a center frequency, and a bandwidth. In some embodiments, the processor system is implemented to generate, based on the artifact characteristics, filter coefficients, and filter, based on the filter coefficients, the received data to suppress the artifact data and recover the ultrasound data”), and
generate ultrasonic signal data by excluding, from an accumulation target, a signal corresponding to the inappropriate position or the inappropriate frame, and accumulating and combining a plurality of frames based on the second ultrasonic signal data after the exclusion (Zhou, Para 63; "FIG. 4A depicts a view 400 illustrating a filter design diagram according to some embodiments. After the artifacts characteristics are determined, an artifact suppression filter is designed (block 401). The artifact suppression filter can include one or more of a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter, an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter, a linear filter, a nonlinear filter, or other artifact suppression filter. In some embodiments, the artifacts suppression filter is designed using a corresponding filter design method. As shown in FIG. 4A, artifacts suppression filter design 401 can include a FIR filter design 402, an IIR filter design 403, a linear filter design, a non-linear filter design, or any combination thereof. Depending on the artifacts' amplitude, phase, center frequency, and bandwidth, the filters can be designed accordingly to adequately mitigate the artifacts while minimizing the impact to real signals. Designing the artifact suppression filter can include determining the filter structure (e.g., IIR, FIR, sparse, lattice, linear, non-linear, etc.) and/or determining the coefficients to be used by the filter. In an example, designing the artifact suppression filter includes bit precisions for implementing the filter.").
Zhou does not clearly and explicitly disclose calculating an index representing a frequency of appearance in the time direction or a variation in the time direction of the signal satisfying the local peak condition over the plurality of frames represented by the second ultrasonic signal data for identifying the inappropriate positions or inappropriate frames.
In an analogous filtering of ultrasound signals field of endeavor Kim discloses calculating an index representing a frequency of appearance in a time direction or a variation in the time direction of a signal satisfying the local peak condition over a plurality of frames represented by ultrasonic signal data for identifying inappropriate positions or inappropriate frames (Kim, Para 85; "In a case where the compared result satisfies the first condition in operation 722, clutter filtering of a predetermined index is applied to the I/Q signal in operation 723.") (Kim, Para 59; "In this instance, the filtering processor 121 c compares magnitudes of the plurality of signal characteristic values. In a case where the compared result satisfies the first condition, the filtering processor 121 c may determine to remove the clutter element from the I/Q signal.") (Kim, Para 84; "In operation 722, whether the result compared in operation 721 satisfies a predetermined first condition is determined. Here, the first condition means that the result obtained by comparing the magnitudes of the plurality of signal characteristic values satisfies any one of") (Kim, Para 61; "Conversely, in a case where the compared result does not satisfy the first condition, the filtering processor 121 c determines not to remove the clutter element from the I/Q signal, and does not apply clutter filtering to the I/Q signal.") (Kim, Para 15; “The control unit may generate a plurality of sub-matrices by performing singular value decomposition with respect to the I/Q signal converted by the signal conversion unit and select a sub-matrix that may be disregarded when performing the clutter filtering among the plurality of sub-matrices based on the plurality of signal characteristic values for each of the plurality of sub-matrices”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zhou to include calculating an index representing a frequency of appearance in the time direction or a variation in the time direction of the signal satisfying the local peak condition over the plurality of frames represented by the second ultrasonic signal data for identifying the inappropriate positions or inappropriate frames in order to generate more precise ultrasound images as taught by Kim (Kim, Para 77).
Regarding claim 2, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou further discloses wherein the processing circuit is configured to generate the third ultrasonic signal data by excluding the inappropriate position or inappropriate position frame from accumulated signal points (Zhou, Para 63; "FIG. 4A depicts a view 400 illustrating a filter design diagram according to some embodiments. After the artifacts characteristics are determined, an artifact suppression filter is designed (block 401). The artifact suppression filter can include one or more of a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter, an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter, a linear filter, a nonlinear filter, or other artifact suppression filter. In some embodiments, the artifacts suppression filter is designed using a corresponding filter design method. As shown in FIG. 4A, artifacts suppression filter design 401 can include a FIR filter design 402, an IIR filter design 403, a linear filter design, a non-linear filter design, or any combination thereof. Depending on the artifacts' amplitude, phase, center frequency, and bandwidth, the filters can be designed accordingly to adequately mitigate the artifacts while minimizing the impact to real signals. Designing the artifact suppression filter can include determining the filter structure (e.g., IIR, FIR, sparse, lattice, linear, non-linear, etc.) and/or determining the coefficients to be used by the filter. In an example, designing the artifact suppression filter includes bit precisions for implementing the filter.").
Regarding claim 3, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou further discloses wherein the processing circuit is configured to generate the third ultrasonic signal data by accumulating the second ultrasonic signal data while excluding any one of the inappropriate position and the inappropriate frame from an accumulation target (Zhou, Para 62; “In some embodiments, the artifacts characteristics are calculated and implemented frame by frame. In some embodiments, an imaging mode is determined, and based on the determined imaging mode, the filter is applied on a line basis and/or a frame basis. For example, if the imaging mode corresponds to a B-mode ultrasound image, then the filter can be applied on a frame basis. If the imaging mode corresponds to a Doppler ultrasound image, then the filter can be applied on a line basis. In some embodiments, determining the imaging mode and setting of the line versus frame filter generation and application rate is performed automatically and without user interventions”) (Zhou, Para 63; "FIG. 4A depicts a view 400 illustrating a filter design diagram according to some embodiments. After the artifacts characteristics are determined, an artifact suppression filter is designed (block 401). The artifact suppression filter can include one or more of a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter, an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter, a linear filter, a nonlinear filter, or other artifact suppression filter. In some embodiments, the artifacts suppression filter is designed using a corresponding filter design method. As shown in FIG. 4A, artifacts suppression filter design 401 can include a FIR filter design 402, an IIR filter design 403, a linear filter design, a non-linear filter design, or any combination thereof. Depending on the artifacts' amplitude, phase, center frequency, and bandwidth, the filters can be designed accordingly to adequately mitigate the artifacts while minimizing the impact to real signals. Designing the artifact suppression filter can include determining the filter structure (e.g., IIR, FIR, sparse, lattice, linear, non-linear, etc.) and/or determining the coefficients to be used by the filter. In an example, designing the artifact suppression filter includes bit precisions for implementing the filter.").
Regarding claim 4, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou further discloses wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify a signal point at a position at which a number of signal extractions is smaller than a criterion as the inappropriate position (Zhou, Para 88; "The machine-learned model can generate a probability (score) that the ultrasound image contains artifacts due to an interferer. If the probability is greater than a threshold probability, such as 80%, then the ultrasound system can cause the notification panel 1204 to be displayed in the user interface 1200 and display the warning/alert. The warning can include text, an icon, an animation, an audio message, haptic feedback (e.g., the ultrasound scanner can vibrate), and the like. In some embodiments, the notification panel 1204 displays artifact characteristics, such as an amplitude, a phase, a center frequency, and/or a bandwidth about the interferer and/or artifacts caused by the interferer.").
Regarding claim 9, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou further discloses wherein the processing circuit is configured to accept an input of a criterion to identify any one of the inappropriate position and the inappropriate frame, and cause a display unit to display a value to be an index value for any one of each position and each frame for a user to set the criterion (Zhou, Para 87; "In some embodiments, the UI design includes a system notification part and an algorithm implementation part. In some embodiments, for the system notification, the user interface provides notifications to a user including a notification indicating presence of an artifact and a suggestion on the availability of user-on-demand artifact suppression feature. In some embodiments, the algorithm implementation includes a pre-defined static filter as a default setting (user cannot control), an adaptive filter without user controls, and/or an adaptive filter as an advanced feature which a user can turn on/off.") (Zhou, Para 88; “In some embodiments, the notification panel 1204 displays artifact characteristics, such as an amplitude, a phase, a center frequency, and/or a bandwidth about the interferer and/or artifacts caused by the interferer.”).
Claims 5-6 and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhou and Kim as applied to claim 1 above, and in further view of Toji et al. (US20140031690, hereafter Toji).
Regarding claim 5, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou discloses wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify a frame in which quality property a larger than a criterion as the inappropriate signal point (Zhou, Para 88; "The machine-learned model can generate a probability (score) that the ultrasound image contains artifacts due to an interferer. If the probability is greater than a threshold probability, such as 80%, then the ultrasound system can cause the notification panel 1204 to be displayed in the user interface 1200 and display the warning/alert. The warning can include text, an icon, an animation, an audio message, haptic feedback (e.g., the ultrasound scanner can vibrate), and the like. In some embodiments, the notification panel 1204 displays artifact characteristics, such as an amplitude, a phase, a center frequency, and/or a bandwidth about the interferer and/or artifacts caused by the interferer.").
Zhou does not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify the inappropriate frame based on a number of extracted signals in a time direction.
In an analogous ultrasound imaging field of endeavor Toji discloses wherein a processing circuit is configured to identify an inappropriate frame based on number of extracted signals in a time direction (Toji, Para 107; "Furthermore, the blood flow region determination unit 106 may analyze the blood flow group itself, before performing processing, such as pattern matching. For example, blood flow noises are often drawn intermittently in the frame direction, and are sometimes separated into individual groups including a small number of blood flow points. Thus, among the blood flow groups, a blood flow group including a smaller number of blood flow points than a threshold value may be judged to be a blood flow noise, and an analysis thereafter on such a blood flow group may be omitted. With this, the need to perform processing of unnecessary information is eliminated, and thus the target blood flow group can be extracted more efficiently.") (Toji, Para 94; “Note that, the generation of the B-mode image and the generation of the blood flow image may be performed sequentially in a time series (hereinafter, one generation unit of each of the B-mode image and the blood flow image is referred to as a frame for convenience)”) (Toji, Para 99; “The blood flow region determination unit 106 repeatedly applies this process to all of the obtained frames, and thus can assign all of the extracted blood flow points the blood flow group numbers. Thus, the blood flow region determination unit 106 can group all the blood flow points. Note that, the above-described “1 second” and “10 mm” are merely exemplary specific numerical values and may be a different time and a different length, respectively.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zhou wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify the inappropriate frame based on a number of extracted signals in a time direction in order to exclude frames with excess blood flow noise and therefore improve quality as taught by Toji (Toji, Para 107).
Regarding claim 6, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou does not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the processing circuit is configured to acquire the first ultrasonic signal data based on signal processing of blood flow imaging.
In an analogous ultrasound imaging field of endeavor Toji discloses wherein a processing circuit is configured to acquire ultrasonic signal data based on signal processing of blood flow imaging (Toji, Para 107; "Furthermore, the blood flow region determination unit 106 may analyze the blood flow group itself, before performing processing, such as pattern matching. For example, blood flow noises are often drawn intermittently in the frame direction, and are sometimes separated into individual groups including a small number of blood flow points. Thus, among the blood flow groups, a blood flow group including a smaller number of blood flow points than a threshold value may be judged to be a blood flow noise, and an analysis thereafter on such a blood flow group may be omitted. With this, the need to perform processing of unnecessary information is eliminated, and thus the target blood flow group can be extracted more efficiently.") (Toji, Para 94; “Note that, the generation of the B-mode image and the generation of the blood flow image may be performed sequentially in a time series (hereinafter, one generation unit of each of the B-mode image and the blood flow image is referred to as a frame for convenience)”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zhou wherein the processing circuit is configured to acquire the first ultrasonic signal data based on signal processing of blood flow imaging in order accurately measure blood vessel characteristics for diagnosis as needed as taught by Toji (Toji, Para 2-6).
Regarding claim 8, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou does not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify the inappropriate frame based on number of extracted signals in a time direction.
In an analogous ultrasound imaging field of endeavor Toji discloses wherein a processing circuit is configured to identify an inappropriate frame based on number of extracted signals in a time direction (Toji, Para 107; "Furthermore, the blood flow region determination unit 106 may analyze the blood flow group itself, before performing processing, such as pattern matching. For example, blood flow noises are often drawn intermittently in the frame direction, and are sometimes separated into individual groups including a small number of blood flow points. Thus, among the blood flow groups, a blood flow group including a smaller number of blood flow points than a threshold value may be judged to be a blood flow noise, and an analysis thereafter on such a blood flow group may be omitted. With this, the need to perform processing of unnecessary information is eliminated, and thus the target blood flow group can be extracted more efficiently.") (Toji, Para 94; “Note that, the generation of the B-mode image and the generation of the blood flow image may be performed sequentially in a time series (hereinafter, one generation unit of each of the B-mode image and the blood flow image is referred to as a frame for convenience)”) (Toji, Para 99; “The blood flow region determination unit 106 repeatedly applies this process to all of the obtained frames, and thus can assign all of the extracted blood flow points the blood flow group numbers. Thus, the blood flow region determination unit 106 can group all the blood flow points. Note that, the above-described “1 second” and “10 mm” are merely exemplary specific numerical values and may be a different time and a different length, respectively.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zhou wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify the inappropriate frame based on number of extracted signals in a time direction in order to exclude frames with excess blood flow noise and therefore improve quality as taught by Toji (Toji, Para 107).
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhou and Kim as applied to claim 1 above, and in further view of Gafner et al. (US20210096243, hereafter Gafner).
Regarding claim 7, Zhou as modified by Kim above discloses all of the limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Zhou does not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify the inappropriate position based on a signal intensity at each point.
In an analogous ultrasound imaging field of endeavor Gafner discloses wherein a processing circuit is configured to identify an inappropriate position based on a signal intensity at each point (Gafner, Para 7; "determining the set of ultrasound images from among the plurality of sets of ultrasound images that has the highest quality includes calculating an image sharpness metric for each of the plurality of sets of ultrasound images, calculating a pixel variation metric for each of the plurality of sets of ultrasound images, calculating a noise metric for each of the plurality of sets of ultrasound images, calculating a total variation metric for each of the plurality of sets of ultrasound images, and/or calculating a pixel intensity metric for each of the plurality of sets of ultrasound images.") (Gafner, Para 44; "determining the quality of a set of ultrasound images may include determining a total variation metric for the image. For further description of the total variation metric, see Rudin, Leonid I., Stanley Osher, and Emad Fatemi. “Nonlinear total variation based noise removal algorithms.” Physica D: nonlinear phenomena 60.1-4 (1992): 259-268.") (Gafner, Para 45; " determining the quality of a set of ultrasound images may include determining a pixel intensity metric. For example, determining the pixel intensity metric for an ultrasound image may include summing the absolute value/square/any power of the pixel intensities of the ultrasound image. A higher value for this metric may correspond to a higher quality image.").
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Zhou wherein the processing circuit is configured to identify the inappropriate position based on a signal intensity at each point in order to produce ultrasound images of higher quality for use by the practitioner as taught by Gafner (Gafner, Para 4-13).
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to John Li whose telephone number is (313)446-4916. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday; 5:30 AM to 3:30 PM Eastern.
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/JOHN D LI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3798
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