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
Acknowledgement is made of Applicant’s claim of the present application claiming priority and benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to Provisional Application No. 63/550,077 filed 02/06/2024.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (“IDS”) filed 05/14/2025 has been reviewed and the listed references were noted. The information statement (“IDS”) filed 01/23/2025 does not include the mandatory IDS Size Fee Assertion; and thus, the references have not been considered.
Drawings
The 5-page drawings have been considered and placed in the file.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-15 are pending.
Claim Objections
Applicant is advised that should claim 1 be found allowable, claim 11 will be objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being a substantial duplicate thereof. When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m). Examiner notes that the method of claim 1 would have to be done with a computer/process, and thus, would make claims 1 and 11 substantial duplicates.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 4-6, 11, and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A).
Regarding claim 1, Stiller teaches, “A method for reconstruction of tomographic volumes from projection data, the method comprising: (Figure 2c of Stiller shows a method of iteratively reconstructing tomography data, wherein simulated reconstructions are created. Examiner notes that it would be obvious to combine the thresholding of Kawai (as is shown below) with the creation of simulated reconstructions of Stiller.) “subtracting the simulated reconstructions from the current reconstructions to create the current reconstructions for a next iteration;” ((Figure 2c of Stiller shows a method of iteratively reconstructing tomography data, wherein simulated reconstructions are subtracted from the current reconstruction. Examiner notes that it would be obvious to combine the thresholding of Kawai (as is shown below) with the creation and subtraction of simulated reconstructions of Stiller.) (Kawai, Col. 2 lines 66-67 and Col. 3 lines 1-8 disclose; “In the computerized tomography system described in (2), the estimated image calculating means includes: maximum value detecting means for obtaining the maximum value of the three-dimensional reconstructed image; threshold calculating means for calculating a threshold according to the maximum value; extracted image calculating means for extracting a part in which the pixel value is equal to or larger than the threshold or the pixel value is equal to or less than the threshold from the estimated image, thereby acquiring an extracted image;”) and “creating final reconstructions by summing the thresholded reconstructions.” (Kawai, Col. 2 lines 66-67 and Col. 3 lines 1-11 disclose; “In the computerized tomography system described in (2), the estimated image calculating means includes: maximum value detecting means for obtaining the maximum value of the three-dimensional reconstructed image; threshold calculating means for calculating a threshold according to the maximum value; extracted image calculating means for extracting a part in which the pixel value is equal to or larger than the threshold or the pixel value is equal to or less than the threshold from the estimated image, thereby acquiring an extracted image; and image adding means for adding the three-dimensional reconstructed image and the extracted image acquired by the previous iterative reconstructing calculation, thereby acquiring an estimated image.”)
Stiller and Kawai are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stiller to incorporate the teachings of Kawai in order to incorporate thresholding into the iterative reconstruction process of Stiller. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller with the teachings of Kawai to initially reduce the number of artifacts in the image. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller and Kawai to obtain the method of claim 1.
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Stiller and Kawai teaches, “The method of claim 1, wherein the current reconstructions are thresholded by zeroing values below thresholds” (Kawai, Col. 9 Lines 38-42 discloses; “The threshold process in the embodiment denotes a process for storing the value at the reconstruction point having a value equal to or larger than the threshold and setting the value at the reconstruction point having a value less than the threshold to zero.”) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Stiller and Kawai references presented in the rejection of claim 1, apply to claim 4 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in claim 4 is met by Stiller and Kawai.
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Stiller and Kawai teaches, “The method of claim 1, wherein creating the simulated reconstructions comprises forward projecting and back projecting from the thresholded reconstructions” (Figure 2c of Stiller shows performing forward and backward projection to create a simulated reconstruction. It would be obvious to perform these projection processes on the thresholded reconstructions of Kawai, as presented in the rejection of claim 1.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Stiller and Kawai references presented in the rejection of claim 1, apply to claim 5 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in claim 5 is met by Stiller and Kawai.
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Stiller and Kawai teaches, “The method of claim 1, further comprising assuming highest values are signals.” (Kawai, Col. 12 Lines 23-26 discloses; “The threshold process using the threshold determined in (b) is performed to the initial estimated image and the region having the high pixel value are extracted, thereby forming the extracted vessel image.” Examiner interprets a “signal” to be an object, thus “signal” is met by “vessel” in Kawai.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Stiller and Kawai references presented in the rejection of claim 1, apply to claim 6 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in claim 6 is met by Stiller and Kawai.
Claim 11 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the method recited in Claim 1. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Stiller and Kawai references, presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to this claim.
Regarding claim 13, the combination of Stiller and Kawai teaches, “The method of claim 11, wherein creating the simulated reconstructions comprises forward projecting the thresholded reconstructions to generate simulated projection data and back projecting the simulated projection data to form the simulated reconstructions.” (Figure 2c of Stiller shows performing forward projecting to create a simulated projection and backward projection to create simulated reconstruction data. It would be obvious to perform these projection processes on the thresholded reconstructions of Kawai, as presented in the rejection of claims 11 an 1.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Stiller and Kawai references presented in the rejection of claim 1, apply to claim 13 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in claim 13 is met by Stiller and Kawai.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Nakanishi et al. (US 20150356728 A1).
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “The method of claim 1, wherein the step of creating the final reconstructions removes spatially varying artifacts such laminographic artifacts and/or high-angle cone beam artifacts.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Nakanishi in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Nakanishi teaches, “The method of claim 1, wherein the step of creating the final reconstructions removes spatially varying artifacts such laminographic artifacts and/or high-angle cone beam artifacts.” (Nakanishi, Abstract discloses; “Cone beam artifacts arise in circular CT reconstruction. The cone beam artifacts are substantially removed by reconstructing a reference image from measured data at circular source trajectory, generating synthetic data by forward projection of the reference image along a pre-determined source trajectory, which supplements the circular source trajectory to a theoretically complete trajectory, reconstructing a correction image from the synthetic data and applying a scaling factor whose value is adaptively determined and optimized based upon the minimization of a predetermined cone beam artifact metric.”)
Stiller, Kawai, and Nakanishi are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Nakanishi in order to remove laminographic or high-angle cone beam artifacts from the data. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Nakanishi to have the ability to remove laminographic or high-angle cone beam artifacts from the data. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Nakanishi to obtain the method of claim 2.
Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Zhou et al. (WO 2021225948 A1).
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “The method of claim 1, wherein thresholds are set based on a range of an initial reconstruction.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Zhou in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Zhou teaches, “The method of claim 1, wherein thresholds are set based on a range of an initial reconstruction.” (Zhou, Para. [0005] discloses; “The accepted unit include densities of 0- 129 HU assigned a score of 0; densities of 130-199 HU assigned a score of 1; densities of 200- 299 HU assigned a score of 2; densities of 300-399 HU assigned a score of 3; and densities of 400 HU or more assigned a score of 4.” It would be obvious to combine this thresholding process with the reconstructions of Stiller and Kawai.)
Stiller, Kawai, and Zhou are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Zhou in order to select a threshold based on a range of a reconstruction. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Zhou to differentiate between a signal and background/artifact. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Zhou to obtain the method of claim 3.
Regarding claim 12, the combination of Stiller, Kawai, and Zhou teaches, “The method of claim 11, wherein thresholding the current reconstructions comprises selecting a plurality of threshold values based on a range of absorption values in an initial reconstruction of the projection data.” (Zhou, Para. [0005] discloses; “The accepted unit include densities of 0- 129 HU assigned a score of 0; densities of 130-199 HU assigned a score of 1; densities of 200- 299 HU assigned a score of 2; densities of 300-399 HU assigned a score of 3; and densities of 400 HU or more assigned a score of 4.” It would be obvious to combine this thresholding process with the reconstructions of Stiller and Kawai.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Stiller, Kawai, and Zhou references presented in the rejection of claim 3, apply to claim 12 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in claim 12 is met by Stiller, Kawai, and Zhou.
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Eberhard et al. (US 4920491 A – IDS Reference).
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “The method of claim 1, wherein prior knowledge of non-Orlov missing objects are added back to the tomography to make the reconstruction more complete.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Eberhard in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Eberhard teaches, “The method of claim 1, wherein prior knowledge of non-Orlov missing objects are added back to the tomography to make the reconstruction more complete.” (Eberhard, Abstract discloses; “The quality of incomplete data Non-Destructive Evaluation and Computed Tomography images is improved by incorporating a priori information into the image reconstruction and image processing to supplement the available data. … The measured and calculated projection data are combined to reconstruct the CT image.” The missing “a priori information” is interpreted to be non-Orlov objects since the a priori information is missing information due to limited-angle tomography.)
Stiller, Kawai, and Eberhard are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Eberhard in order to add prior knowledge of missing objects to the reconstruction. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Eberhard to improve the amount object representation in an image. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Eberhard to obtain the method of claim 7.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Andrew et al. (US 20230009951 A1).
Regarding claim 8, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “The method of claim 1, further comprising training a neural network based on the reconstructions.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Andrew. Specifically, Andrew teaches, “The method of claim 1, further comprising training a neural network based on the reconstructions.” (Andrew, Para. [0009] discloses; “The method further comprises training a neural network using each of the CT training reconstructed volumes.”)
Stiller, Kawai, and Andrew are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Andrew in order to train a neural network. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Andrew to train a neural network to perform the tomographic image reconstruction. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Andrew to obtain the method of claim 8.
Claims 9 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Chamgoulov et al. (US 20070258122 A1).
Regarding claim 9, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “The method of claim 1, further comprising adjusting the reconstructions for negative density values.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Chamgoulov in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Chamgoulov teaches, “The method of claim 1, further comprising adjusting the reconstructions for negative density values.” (Chamgoulov, Para. [0128] discloses; “The reconstructed image should always have a physical meaning. For example the optical density of an object cannot be negative. In cases where a reconstructed image includes points having a negative density, it can be desirable to replace the negative density with a density of zero or a very small value.” Examiner interprets replacing the negative density with a density of 0 as adjusting the reconstruction for negative density values.)
Stiller, Kawai, and Chamgoulov are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Chamgoulov in order to adjust the negative density values of the reconstruction. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Chamgoulov to adjust the negative density values because optical density values cannot be negative. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Chamgoulov to obtain the method of claim 9.
Regarding claim 14, the combination of Stiller, Kawai, and Chamgoulov teaches, “The method of claim 11, further comprising correcting negative density values in the updated current reconstructions following the subtraction step to ensure physically meaningful density distributions.” (Chamgoulov, Para. [0028] discloses; “for each of the plurality of angles computing a computed projection of the reconstructed image and computing a difference between the computed projection and the corresponding initial projection; applying the transform to the computed differences to yield an error image; and, combining the error image with the reconstructed image. Refining the reconstructed image of the specimen may be iterated.” And Chamgoulov, Para. [0128] discloses; “The reconstructed image should always have a physical meaning. For example the optical density of an object cannot be negative. In cases where a reconstructed image includes points having a negative density, it can be desirable to replace the negative density with a density of zero or a very small value.” The correcting of negative densities is interpreted to be a part of refining the reconstructed image, which is performed after finding the difference between projections.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Stiller, Kawai, and Chamgoulov references presented in the rejection of claim 9, apply to claim 14 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in claim 14 is met by Stiller, Kawai, and Chamgoulov.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Xu et al. (US 20180374245 A1).
Regarding claim 10, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “An X-ray micro tomography system executing an artifact removal application implementing the method of claim 1.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Xu in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Xu teaches, “An X-ray micro tomography system executing an artifact removal application implementing the method of claim 1.” (Xu, Para. [0003] discloses; “Moreover, X-ray CBCT has been increasingly employed in many imaging related applications, such as micro-computed tomography. X-ray CBCT can include relatively simple geometric configuration with a circular scanning geometry.” The application of Xu is in the context of removing artifacts, which can be seen throughout the document. It would be obvious to combine the system of Xu with the method of claim 1, as disclosed by Stiller and Kawai.)
Stiller, Kawai, and Xu are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Xu in order to use an X-ray micro tomography system for the method of claim 1. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Xu to use the method of claim 1 on specimens that can be imaged with an X-ray micro tomography system. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Xu to obtain the method of claim 10.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wolfram Stiller (“Basics of Iterative Reconstruction Methods in Computed Tomography: A Vendor-Independent Overview”), in view of Kawai et al. (US 5848114 A), in further view of Gu et al. (“A Brief Comparison of Computed Laminography Versus 3D X-ray Microscopy”).
Regarding claim 15, the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly teach, “The method of claim 11, wherein the projection data is generated under a laminographic or high cone-beam imaging geometry, and the spatially varying artifacts arise due to missing views or non-Orlov-complete data acquisition.” Since the combination of Stiller and Kawai does not explicitly disclose these limitations, Examiner relies on the teachings of Gu in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Gu teaches, “The method of claim 11, wherein the projection data is generated under a laminographic or high cone-beam imaging geometry, and the spatially varying artifacts arise due to missing views or non-Orlov-complete data acquisition.” (Gu, Page 4, “Conclusion” discloses; “Incomplete reconstruction by the computed laminography (CL) technique may result in distorted structures in artifacts-prone data due to missing long-view projections carrying crucial sample information.” It would be obvious to use the imaging system/method disclosed by Gu in combination with the generated projection data of Stiller and Kawai (in rejection of claim 11 &1) to obtain claim 15.)
Stiller, Kawai, and Gu are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of reconstructing tomographic data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Stiller and Kawai to incorporate the teachings of Gu in order to have the projection generated under laminographic geometry, and have the artifacts arise due to missing views. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described method of Stiller and Kawai with the teachings of Gu to use the previously described method to remove artifacts due to imaging under laminographic geometry. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Stiller, Kawai, and Gu to obtain the method of claim 15.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN M. OAKES whose telephone number is (571)272-9379. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30am-5pm.
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/JUSTIN M OAKES/Examiner, Art Unit 2662
/Siamak Harandi/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2662
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