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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed March 6, 2025 fails to comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.98(a)(4) because it lacks the appropriate size fee assertion. It has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered as to the merits.
Claim Objections
Claim 6 and 17 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 6 and 17, “reassigning a pixel overruns a seed point” is grammatically incorrect.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claim 10 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.
Claim 10 recites, “generating a first plurality of 2D image slices without a contrasting agent” in lines 1-2. Claim 10 depends on claim 1 which recites, “selecting a 2D (two dimensional) image slice from a plurality of first 2D image slices” in line 1. It is unclear if the first plurality of 2D image slices in claim 10 is from the subset of first 2D image slices, or if they are unrelated/different.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-9 and 11-20 are allowed (NOTE: claims 6 and 17 should be corrected based on objections noted above).
Claim 10 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the closest prior arts of record teach methods of identifying structures of interest based on slices of a 3D medical image. However, none of them alone or in any combination teaches generating a histogram of a 2D slice of an image, comparing that histogram to an atlas of average histograms to assign the slice to a body region, performing threshold segmentation, identifying an entity based on a geometric characteristic of size or shape, labeling pixels within that entity to be a seed point, filling the pixels from the seed into the entity using the thresholded segmentation, and comparing the entity to the geometric characteristic to reassign the pixels to a potentially different entity.
The closest prior art being U.S. 2007/0019846 to Bullitt et al. (hereinafter Bullitt) discloses performing vessel analysis by comparing statistical measures from an image to that of an atlas (abstract).
However, Bullitt fails to disclose generating a histogram of a 2D slice of an image, comparing that histogram to an atlas of average histograms to assign the slice to a body region, performing threshold segmentation, identifying an entity based on a geometric characteristic of size or shape, labeling pixels within that entity to be a seed point, filling the pixels from the seed into the entity using the thresholded segmentation, and comparing the entity to the geometric characteristic to reassign the pixels to a potentially different entity.
Conclusion
The examiner would like to note double patenting rejections were considered. Upon review of the related patents, it was determined no double patenting rejection was needed. One feature claimed in this claim set, and not in the others is the reassigning limitation which reassigns pixels in the first element to a second element based on a comparison of the element with geometric characteristics.
Further, in order to perform compact prosecution a phone call was made to the Sci-Law Strategies, however no appropriate person was reached.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
U.S. Publication No. 2007/0248265 to Lundstrom et al. discloses, “analyzing a medical volume data set associated with a patient that is automatically electronically divided into a plurality of local histograms having intensity value ranges associated therewith and programmatically generating at least one α-histogram of data from the local histograms used for at least one of peak detection, transfer function design or adaptation, tissue detection or tissue classification (abstract).”
Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Courtney J. Windsor whose telephone number is (571)272-3956. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:00 - 4:00.
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COURTNEY J. WINDSOR
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2661
