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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim(s) 2-8 and 22-34 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U. S. Publication No. 2012/0106702 to Feke et al in view of U. S. Publication No. 2018/0270474 to Liu et. al.
Regarding Claim 2, 22, and 28, Feke teaches a surgical system comprising: produce a first image modality of a surgical scene that provides a first type of enhancement to image data received by one or more cameras (abstract and fig. 8c); produce a second image modality of the surgical scene that provides a second type of enhancement to image data received by the one or more cameras (fig. 8c and para 019-021).
Feke teaches all of the above colimitations but does not expressly teach ; stitch together a first portion of the first image modality and a second portion of the second image modality to produce a stitch format; anddisplay the stitch format in a selected region of a display.
Liu teaches stitching together a first portion of the first image modality and a second portion of the second image modality to produce a stitch format; and display the stitch format in a selected region of a display (figs. 8c and 9 teaches combining first and second image, and displaying combined image).
It would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify Feke with a setup such that first and second image are combined and displayed as taught by Liu, since such a setup would result in a more clear view of the surgical site, as both the first and second image are simultaneously displayed, helping the surgeon with proper decision making.
Regarding claims 3-5, 23-25, and 29-31 Liu teaches that the surgical system to select the first portion of the first image modality to stitch together with the second portion of the second image modality (abstract para 0021, figs. 8c and 9 teaches multiple cameras/imaging modalities for imaging and combining the first image from the first camera and second image from the second camera to generate a combined image).
Regarding Claims 6, 26, and 32, Feke teaches that the first image modality includes one of clear, Near Band Imaging, Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence and hyperspectral imaging; and wherein the second image modality includes a different one of Near Band Imaging, Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence and hyperspectral imaging (para 017-020).
Regarding Claim 7 and 27, Feke teaches that the format selection comprises one of a stitch, picture-in-picture or annotated format (abstract para 0021, figs. 8c and 9 teaches multiple cameras/imaging modalities for imaging and combining the first image from the first camera and second image from the second camera to generate a combined image).
Regarding Claims 8, 27, and 34, Liu teaches to use the format selection to display the first image modality of the first portion of the surgical scene within a region of the display and the second image modality of the second portion of the surgical scene within a different region of the display (figs. 2-4, 9, 10, and 18a-I; fig. 26 teaches camera 1 images first scene of the target region element 336 and camera 2 images second scene of the target region element 326).
Conclusion
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/SANJAY CATTUNGAL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3798
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