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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending in this application and have been considered below. This action is a first action on the merits.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for domestic benefit under 35 U.S.C. 365(c) and 120 to International Application No. PCT/CN2023/071661, filed January 10, 2023.
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) to China application No. 202211110592.3, filed September 13, 2022. A certified copy of the foreign priority application has been received. The effective filing date of the claimed invention is accordingly September 13, 2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The IDS(s) has/have been considered and placed in the application file.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 9-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a “A computer-readable storage medium, wherein a computer program is stored in the storage medium” that is non-statutory subject matter. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer-readable medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations) typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent. See MPEP 2111.01.
A claim drawn to such a computer-readable medium that covers both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by adding the limitation “non-transitory” to the claim.
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(s) 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites, in step S4, “performing phase correlation solution on the two spherical characterizations obtained in S3.” Step S3 recites two different representations: it first converts
the amplitude spectra into “spherical characterizations,” and then integrates those along their inner radiuses to obtain “two spherical surface characterizations.” It is therefore unclear which
of the two the phase correlation of step S4 is performed on. Read literally, step S4 is performed on the representation existing before the radial integration of step S3, which is inconsistent with the specification. The metes and bounds of the claim cannot be determined.
Suggested correction: In step S4, replace “the two spherical characterizations obtained in S3” with “the two spherical surface characterizations obtained in S3.”
Claim 1 recites, in step S 18, “the translation transformation relationship jointly obtained in S13, S15, and S17.” Steps S13, S15 and S17 each separately recite “a translation
transformation relationship” in the x, y and z direction respectively. There is insufficient antecedent basis for a single translation transformation relationship jointly obtained in those
three steps.
Suggested correction: In step S 18, replace “the translation transformation relationship jointly obtained in S13, S15, and S17" with “the translation transformation relationships obtained in S13, S15, and S17.”
Claim 3 recites “weighted weights of five losses in a total loss function” and claim 4 recites “all five losses in a total loss function.” Both claims depend from claim 1. Claim 1 does
not recite a total loss function and does not recite any loss. Neither claim identifies which five losses are being referred to, and the scope of the recited weighting cannot be determined from
claim 1. The total loss function and its five constituent losses are introduced only in claim 2. Claims 11, 12, 19 and 20, which refer to claims 3 and 4, are rejected for the same reason.
Suggested correction: Amend claims 3 and 4 to depend from claim 2 rather than claim 1, and amend claim 2 to recite “a weighted sum of five losses, namely a rotation transformation relationship loss” so that “the five losses” and “the total loss function” of claims 3 and 4 have proper antecedent basis..
Claim(s) 2 and 5-20 depend either directly or indirectly from the rejection of claim(s) 1, therefore they are also rejected.
Appropriate correction is required.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 would be allowable if amended to overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C.
101 and 35 U.S.C. 112(b) set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record but not relied, yet considered pertinent to the applicant’s disclosure, is listed on the PTO-892 form.
Wang et al., US 12,602,826 B2. Teaches the registration pipeline of claim 1 carried out on two-dimensional images: first and second pre-trained U-Net feature extractors producing isomorphic feature maps, a Fourier transform removing the translation relationship while retaining rotation and scaling, a logarithmic polar coordinate transform, and phase correlation solution to recover rotation and scaling, followed by separate fifth/sixth and seventh/eighth U-Net pairs that solve the x direction and y direction translation relationships. Also teaches the weighted sum loss of claim 2, weights of 1 as in claim 3, L1 loss as in claim 4, and independent U-Net networks as in claim 5. This reference is the English-language family member of CN 113240743 A, which applicant cited in the information disclosure statement.
Bulow and Birk, “Scale-Free Registrations in 3D: 7 Degrees of Freedom with Fourier Mellin SOFT Transforms,” International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 126, pp. 731-750 (2018). Teaches the three-dimensional spectral decoupling recited in steps S2 through S4 and the translation solution of steps S13, S 15 and S17, by a sequence of the 3D Fourier transform, accumulation of the spherical structures along the radial axis to yield a function that is matched to determine an underlying 3D rotation, an SO(3) Fourier transform based on spherical harmonics, a 3D Mellin transform for scale, and phase matching for translation. The method is classical and does not use learned feature extraction.
Chen et al., “DPCN++: Differentiable Phase Correlation Network for Versatile Pose Registration,” arXiv:2206.05707vl, June 12, 2022. Teaches the claimed pipeline applied to
three-dimensional measurements with learned feature extraction, including UNet3D feature
extractors, spherical radial aggregation, Z-Y-Z Euler angle rotation as in claim 7, and accumulation of the three-dimensional spectrum along one axis to form a two-dimensional grid
prior to logarithmic polar scale estimation, corresponding to steps S8 and S9. Rotation, scale and translation are solved step by step. Translation is solved for all three axes jointly rather than by the separate network pairs of steps S12 through S17.
Bernreiter et al., “PHASER: A Robust and Correspondence-free Global Point cloud Registration,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2021), arXiv:2102.02767. Teaches correspondence-free global registration of three-dimensional measurements using the spatial and spherical Fourier transforms, finding rotation first and translation second, as in the ordering of steps S4 and S13 through S17. The method resolves six degrees of freedom and does not address the scaling transformation of steps S8 through S10.
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/Ross Varndell/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2674
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