DETAILED ACTION
[1] Remarks
I. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
II. Claims 1-20 are pending and have been examined, where claims 1, 3-7 and 9-20 is/are rejected, claim 2 and 8 is/are objected to. Explanations will be provided below.
III. Inventor and/or assignee search were performed and determined no double patenting rejection(s) is/are necessary.
IV. Patent eligibility (updated in 2019) shown by the following: Claims 1-20 pass patent eligibility test because there is/are no limitation or a combination of limitations amounting to an abstract idea. Also, the following limitation or the combinations of the limitations: “ inputting the plurality of embeddings into a linear projection model whose output feeds a transformer; and receiving, as output from a model comprising the transformer, a diagnosis of a disease of the body part” effects a transformation or a reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing / adds a specific limitation(s) other than what is well-understood, routine and conventional in the field, or adding unconventional steps that confine the claim to a particular useful application and providing improvements to the technical field of
which recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application and amounting significant more.
[2] Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
Use of the word “means” (or “step for”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim element is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph). The presumption that 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph) is invoked is rebutted when the function is recited with sufficient structure, material, or acts within the claim itself to entirely perform the recited function. Absence of the word “means” (or “step for”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim element is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph). The presumption that 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph) is not invoked is rebutted when the claim element recites function but fails to recite sufficiently definite structure, material or acts to perform that function.
Claim elements in this application that use the word “means” (or “step for”) are presumed to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Similarly, claim elements that do not use the word “means” (or “step for”) are presumed not to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
Claim(s) 1-20 do not require 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA U.S.C. 112 6th paragraph interpretation because they are method claims and / or they are CRM claims.
Upon examination of the specification and claims, the examiner has determined, under the best understanding of the scope of the claim(s), rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(a)/(b) is not necessitated because of the following reasons: sufficient support are provided in the written description / drawings of the invention.
[3] Grounds of Rejection
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
U.S.C. 102 Conditions for patentability; novelty.
[Editor Note: Applicable to any patent application subject to the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA (see 35 U.S.C. 100 (note) ). See 35 U.S.C. 102 (pre-AIA ) for the law otherwise applicable.]
(a) NOVELTY; PRIOR ART.—A person shall be entitled to a patent unless—
(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; or
(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.
(b) EXCEPTIONS.—
(1) DISCLOSURES MADE 1 YEAR OR LESS BEFORE THE EFFECTIVE FILING DATE OF THE CLAIMED INVENTION.—A disclosure made 1 year or less before the effective filing date of a claimed invention shall not be prior art to the claimed invention under subsection (a)(1) if—
(A) the disclosure was made by the inventor or joint inventor or by another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor; or
(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such disclosure, been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor.
(2) DISCLOSURES APPEARING IN APPLICATIONS AND PATENTS.—A disclosure shall not be prior art to a claimed invention under subsection (a)(2) if—
(A) the subject matter disclosed was obtained directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor;
(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such subject matter was effectively filed under subsection (a)(2), been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor; or
(C) the subject matter disclosed and the claimed invention, not later than the effective filing date of the claimed invention, were owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person.
Claims 1, 5-7, and 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipate by Nazih et al. (W. Nazih, A. O. Aseeri, O. Y. Atallah and S. El-Sappagh, "Vision Transformer Model for Predicting the Severity of Diabetic Retinopathy in Fundus Photography-Based Retina Images," in IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 117546-117561, 2023).
Regarding claim 1, Nazih et al. discloses a method for autonomously diagnosing a disease of a patient, the method comprising:
receiving a high-resolution image of a body part (see figure 1, shows an image of the retina which is a part of the body, the fundus image is a large image with at least 3000x2000);
dividing the high-resolution image into a plurality of tiles (see figure 3, the fundus image is divided into equal parts);
generating a plurality of embeddings comprising of an embedding for each tile of the plurality of tiles, each embedding having a position encoding corresponding to its tile’s position in the image (see figure 3, “Linear Projection of Flattened Patches” generates “Patch + Position Embedding”);
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inputting the plurality of embeddings into a linear projection model whose output feeds a transformer (see figure 3, each embedding is fed into the transformer encoder); and
receiving, as output from a model comprising the transformer, a diagnosis of a disease of the body part (see figure 3, the classification categories are no disease and the severity of each disease).
Regarding claim 5, Nazih et al. discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the model comprises an attention mechanism, and wherein the method further comprises generating for display a heat map corresponding to the image of the body part, the heat map comprising a two-dimensional image of tokens having an amplitude based on an attention level output by the attention mechanism (see figure 7, the image in the middle is read as the heatmap, where the color of the heat map indicates the area of importance):
Regarding claim 6, Nazih et al. discloses the method of claim 5, wherein the heat map reflects a collection of tiles that contributed to the diagnosis of the disease of the body part (see figure 7 illustration below, the disease area are shown):
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Regarding claim 7 see the rationale and rejection for claim 1.
Regarding claim 11 see the rationale and rejection for claim 5.
Regarding claim 12 see the rationale and rejection for claim 6.
Regarding claim 13 see the rationale and rejection for claim 1. In addition, Nazih et al. discloses performing a task based on a classification output by the model (see figure 3, the outputs are disease predictions).
Regarding claim 14, see the rationale and rejection for claim 1. In addition, Nazih et al. discloses receiving, as output from a model comprising the transformer, a diagnosis of a disease of the body part (see figure 3, the classification categories are no disease and the severity of each disease).
Regarding claim 15, Nazih et al. discloses the method of claim 13, wherein the task comprises extracting features from each tile, and wherein the method further comprises inputting the features into a diagnostic model, the diagnostic model configured to output a diagnosis of whether or not a patient having a body part depicted in the high-resolution image has a disease (see figure 3, “Linear Projection” is the features extract from each tile and the output is the prediction of whether is present or not).
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Regarding claim 16, Nazih et al. discloses the method of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises generating for display a heat map representative of an attention mechanism of the model (see figure 7 illustration below, the disease area are shown and highlighted):
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Regarding claim 17, see the rationale and rejection for claims 1 and 13.
Regarding claim 18, see the rationale and rejection for claim 14.
Regarding claim 19, see the rationale and rejection for claim 15.
Regarding claim 20, see the rationale and rejection for claim 16.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
1. 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.
2. Claims 3-4 and 9-10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nazih et al. in view of Nazih et al. in view of ZHU (US 20230100413).
Regarding claim 3, Nazih et al. discloses all the limitations of claim 1, but is silent in disclosing the method of claim 1, wherein each tile is at least partially overlapping with at least one other tile. ZHU discloses the method of claim 1, wherein each tile is at least partially overlapping with at least one other tile (see figure 7A, the tiles at scale 8x overlaps with the tiles at 16x):
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It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include wherein each tile is at least partially overlapping with at least one other tile to when creating panoramas, individual photos tiles overlap so software can find matching pixels and blend them together seamlessly, to include pixels with details which improves image recognition.
Regarding claim 4, Nazih et al. the method of claim 1, wherein each tile is overlapping with at least half of at least one other tile (see figure 7A, the overlap is more than half of the tile). See the motivation for claim 3.
Regarding claim 9 see the rationale and rejection for claim 3.
Regarding claim 10 see the rationale and rejection for claim 4.
[4] Claim Objections
Claim(s) 2 and 8 is/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.
With regards to claim 2, the examiner cannot find any applicable prior art providing teachings for the following limitation(s): the method of claim 1, further comprising: determining that the high-resolution image is high-resolution based on it having a resolution above a threshold resolution, wherein images having a resolution below the threshold resolution are used to perform diagnosis based on extracting features from the images using a feature extraction model, and inputting the extracted features into a diagnostic model; in combination with the rest of the limitations of claim 1.
Swierk (US 11310464) discloses the trained ICCSMS neural network 644 may provide, as output, instructions to adjust the camera resolution at the streaming media drivers 627-1 or 627-2, including any camera drivers, among other self-remediation instructions (see column 37, lines 57-61), but is silent in disclosing the method of claim 1, further comprising: determining that the high-resolution image is high-resolution based on it having a resolution above a threshold resolution, wherein images having a resolution below the threshold resolution are used to perform diagnosis based on extracting features from the images using a feature extraction model, and inputting the extracted features into a diagnostic model.
Regarding claim 8 see the rationale and objection for claim 2.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEX LIEW (duty station is located in New York City) whose telephone number is (571)272-8623 (FAX 571-273-8623), cell (917)763-1192 or email alexa.liew@uspto.gov. Please note the examiner cannot reply through email unless an internet communication authorization is provided by the applicant. The examiner can be reached anytime.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, MISTRY ONEAL R, can be reached on (313)446-4912. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/ALEX KOK S LIEW/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2674 Telephone: 571-272-8623
Date: 9/25/26
