DETAILED ACTION
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
Claims 1-20 are 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.
Examiner notes that the details of the claimed steps are replete with indefinite language. The independent claims each contain the following issues, the language in claim 1 is used as exemplary:
Regarding the limitation, “generate a pair of feature maps identifying a plurality of features within the image pairs;” there is no antecedent basis here for the plural term “pairs”.
Regarding the limitation, “compare other image pairs, immediately preceding image pair in time, to identify a direction and magnitude of changes in the feature maps as a warped depth map;” Examiner first notes that it is unclear what is meant by “other image pairs” in the context here. Second, it is also unclear what these “other image pairs” are being compared to or if they are being compared to themselves. Third, it appears the claim should be amended: “immediately preceding the image pair in time”
Regarding the limitation, “compare the feature maps and saliency maps for each of the image pairs and another image pair, immediately preceding each of the image pairs, to generate motion intensity maps;” Examiner first notes that it is not clear what is being compared, the two maps to each other within a pair, or the two pairs to one another on the basis of their maps? Second, in the language above if “another image pair” is immediately preceding each of multiple image pairs then there must be multiple “another image pairs”. However, this is not how the claim is written. Third, it would appear that one of the “another image pairs” would be required to be the same image pair as the “other image pair” from two paragraphs prior since they would be immediately preceding the same pair. Fourth, the language “another image pair” and the “other image pair” is sufficiently confusing that it is not clear whether Applicant is intending that these are the same or different pairs.
Regarding the limitation, “generate a coarse depth map for the image pairs from the warped depth map, the saliency maps, and the motion intensity maps along with a confidence map identifying a confidence associated with each coarse pixel depth within the coarse depth map;” It appears the claim should possibly be amended as follows “generate a coarse depth map for each of the image pairs”. As it stands the antecedent basis is not clear of “the image pairs”
Regarding the limitation, “perform cross-view refinement of the coarse depth map reliant upon at least one other image pair of two-dimensional, color images of the scene to create a refined depth map; and”. Examiner notes that the term “at least one other image pair” is unclear in this context. It is not clear what the ‘reference’ image pair that is being referred to might be.
Claims 3 and 11 are 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. It appears the claim should be amended as follows, “wherein the instructions further cause the processor to output the refined depth map [[and]] corresponding to the image pair for combination into volumetric video.”
Claims 6, 14 and 20 are 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. There is no antecedent basis support for the term “unified saliency maps”.
Claims 7 and 15 are 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 the limitation “matching each pixel in one image of the image pair with another image of the image pairs in one dimension along with an associated confidence score;” First, it appears the term “image pairs” here should be singular. Second, it appear the claim should possibly be amended as follow “and generating an associated confidence score”.
Claim Objections
Claims 1 and 17 are objected to because of the following informalities: The claim should be corrected as follows, “denoise the refined depth map to create a denoised refined depth map.” Appropriate correction is required.
Claims 5, 13 and 19 are objected to because of the following informalities: The claim should be corrected as follows, “applying a full depth estimation process in a case wherein the motion intensity map indicates motion.”
Relevant Prior Art
Chang, Jia-Ren, and Yong-Sheng Chen. "Pyramid stereo matching network." 2018 IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition. IEEE, 2018.
Guo, Xiaoyang, et al. "Group-wise correlation stereo network." 2019 IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (CVPR). IEEE, 2019.
Yu, Xuefei, et al. "Parallax attention stereo matching network based on the improved group-wise correlation stereo network." Plos one 17.2 (2022): e0263735.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Raphael Schwartz whose telephone number is (571)270-3822. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday 9am-5pm CT.
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/RAPHAEL SCHWARTZ/ Examiner, Art Unit 2671
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