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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to under 37 CFR 1.83(a). The drawings must show every feature of the invention specified in the claims. Therefore, the “system”, “computed tomography (CT) device”, and “computer” of claim 1, the “non-transitory computer-readable medium” of claim 9, and the “electronic device, comprising a memory, a processor…” of claim 10 must be shown or the feature(s) canceled from the claim(s). No new matter should be entered.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 9 and 10 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Independent claims 1, 9 and 10 each capitalize “Transformer” which should not be capitalized.
Further independent claims 1, 9 and 10 also contain elements within parenthesis [e.g. (morphological dilation and erosion operations).], however, parenthesis in the claims are generally reserved for reference characters and elements which do not further limit the claims. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Interpretation
Claim 1 recites “a computed tomography (CT) device configured to…” and “computer configured to…” which are not being interpreted under 112(f) as both terms have a sufficiently definite meaning as the name for structure to one of ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP § 2181: "The standard is whether the words of the claim are understood by persons of ordinary skill in the art to have a sufficiently definite meaning as the name for structure." Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1349, 115 USPQ2d 1105, 1111 (Fed. Cir. 2015).
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 1-11 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.
Independent claims 1, 9 and 10 each similarly recite “carry out pooling operations (morphological dilation and erosion operations) on the third feature map…” As explained above in the claim objection section, parenthesis in the claims are generally reserved for reference characters and elements which do not further limit the claims and thus, it is unclear whether the features within the parenthesis are positively recited or not. In other words, it is unclear whether or not the pooling operations must comprise morphological dilation and erosion operations or whether these elements in the parenthesis are merely examples. Therefore, the claims are indefinite.
Dependent claims 2-8 and 11 are rejected due to their dependency from claim 1.
For examination purposes, the examiner will interpret that the pooling operations must comprise both morphological dilation and erosion operations as if the limitations were positively recited.
The examiner suggests amending the claims to recite “carry out pooling operations comprising [[(]]morphological dilation and erosion operations[[)]] on the third feature map…”
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-11 would be allowable if rewritten or amended 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
In the closest prior art:
Xia et al. (US 2023/0410296) disclose acquiring a detection image obtained through computed tomography; extracting a target body part image corresponding to a target body part from the detection image; performing first image classification and segmentation on the target body part image through a first image detection model, to determine whether a first target lesion type and a lesion region corresponding to the first target lesion type exist in the target body part image; and performing second image classification and segmentation on the target body part image through a second image detection model, to determine whether a second target lesion type and a lesion region corresponding to the second target lesion type exist in the target body part image, wherein the second target lesion type is a subcategory of the first target lesion type (See Figures 1-2, for example.).
Wang et al. (US 2023/0023585) disclose an artificial intelligence-based image processing method implemented by a computer device (Figure 22). The method includes acquiring an image, performing element region detection on the image to determine an element region in the image, detecting a target element region in the image using an artificial intelligence-based technique, generating a target element envelope region by searching an envelope for the detected target element region, and fusing the element region and the target element envelope region to obtain a target element region outline (See Figure 2).
Wu et al. (US 2023/0071885) disclose a system for identifying individuals at risk for PDAC including a CT scanner, a memory, and a control system. The CT scanner is configured to generate CT image data associated with a pancreas of a patient. The CT image data associated with the pancreas of the patient is received. The received CT image data is processed to output a set of CT image features. The set of CT image features is received as an input to a machine learning PDAC prediction algorithm. An indication of whether the patient is at high risk for PDAC is determined as an output of the machine learning PDAC prediction algorithm (See Figure 2, for example.).
Melamed et al. (US 2021/0133954) disclose a computer implemented method for detection of likelihood of malignancy in an anatomical image of a patient for treatment planning (Figure 1), comprising receiving an anatomical image (Such as a CT image, see paragraph [0002].), feeding the anatomical image into a global component of a model trained to output a global classification label, feeding the anatomical image into a local component of the model trained to output a localized boundary, feeding the anatomical image patch-wise into a patch component of the model trained to output a patch level classification label, extracting a respective set of regions of interest (ROIs) from each one of the components, each ROI indicative of a region of the anatomical image likely to include an indication of malignancy, aggregating the ROIs from each one of the components into an aggregated set of ROIs, and feeding the aggregated set of ROIs into an output component that outputs an indication of likelihood of malignancy (Figure 1).
Bagei et al. (US 2020/0160997) disclose of a method for detection and diagnosis of lung and pancreatic cancers from imaging scans (See paragraphs [0033].), using a CNN (Figure 2, for example, and paragraphs [0044] and [0103]-[0109].).
Kaufman et al. (US 2020/0226748) disclose for a system and method for virtual pancreatography (Figure 1 and paragraphs [0046]-[0047].). In Figures 4A-4C show a classification module.
Liu et al. (CN 109242844 B) disclose of a pancreatic cancer tumor automatic identification system based on deep learning (Figure 1).
However, the closest prior art fails to teach or suggest, even in combination, the limitations reciting “…extract a shallow feature of the 3D CT image to be segmented through a convolution operation, obtain a shallow feature map, split the shallow feature map, add positional encoding, reconstruct the shallow feature map into a code sequence, input the code sequence into a lightweight Transformer, and extract a global dependency relationship of the shallow feature; and…fuse the global dependency relationship and the first feature map, and obtain a second feature map; discard redundant information…and regard a top-level feature map of which redundant information is discarded as a third feature map; carry out pooling operations (morphological dilation and erosion operations) on the third feature map…”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to STEPHEN G SHERMAN whose telephone number is (571)272-2941. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8:00am - 4pm ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, AMR AWAD can be reached at (571)272-7764. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/STEPHEN G SHERMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2621
23 September 2026
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