Ex Parte Prevrhal et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 4, 2017

14116358 (P.T.A.B. May. 4, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O.Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/116,358 11/08/2013 Sven Prevrhal 2011P00399WOUS 6746 24737 7590 05/08/2017 PTTTT TPS TNTFT T FfTTTAT PROPFRTY fr STANDARDS EXAMINER 465 Columbus Avenue ABDI, AMARA Suite 340 Valhalla, NY 10595 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2668 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/08/2017 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): marianne. fox @ philips, com debbie.henn @philips .com patti. demichele @ Philips, com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte SVEN PREVRHAL, JOERG BREDNO, AMY PERKINS, and PATRICK OLIVIER Appeal 2016-007863 Application 14/116,35 s1 Technology Center 2600 Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JOHN D. HAMANN, and JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1—15 and 20-24.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. App. Br. 1. 2 Claims 16, 17, and 26 have been canceled. Final Act 2. The Examiner objected to claims 18, 19, 25, and 27—29 as dependent upon a rejected base claim, but indicated those claims would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. Id. at 21—22. Appeal 2016-007863 Application 14/116,358 INVENTION Appellants’ application relates to list mode dynamic image reconstruction. Abstract. Claim 1 is illustrative of the appealed subject matter and reads as follows: 1. A non-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable by a digital processor to perform a method comprising: providing imaging data comprising events wherein each event records at least spatial localization information for a decay event and a timestamp for the decay event; reconstructing the imaging data using a digital processing device implementing an event-preserving reconstruction algorithm to generate an event-preserving reconstructed image dataset comprising the events of the provided imaging data with for each event the timestamp and at least one spatial voxel assignment that assigns the event to a single voxel or to one or more voxels with a membership probability for each voxel; and performing a post-reconstruction image processing operation on the image, the post-reconstruction image processing operation utilizing timestamps of the event-preserving reconstructed image dataset. REJECTIONS3 Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, and 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over the combination of C. Groiselle et al., “3D PET List-Mode Iterative Reconstruction Using Time-Of-Flight Information,'1' (IEEE 2004) 3 Claims 3, 6—12, and 15 stand rejected as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the combination of Groiselle and various additional references. Final Act. 9-21. Appellants do not present any separate patentability arguments for these claims. App. Br. 10—11. Except for our ultimate decision, these claims will not be discussed herein. 2 Appeal 2016-007863 Application 14/116,358 (“Groiselle”) and Demeester et al. (US 2010/0290683 Al; published Nov. 18, 2010) (“Demeester”). Final Act. 5—9. Claim 13 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Groiselle. Final Act. 15. Claims 14 and 20-234 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over the combination of Groiselle and Busch (US 2010/0202664 Al; published Aug. 12, 2010). Final Act. 16. ANALYSIS In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner found that Groiselle teaches or suggests ah of the recited limitations, except “performing a post reconstruction image processing operation on the image, the post reconstruction image processing operation utilizing timestamps of the event preserving reconstructed image dataset,” for which the Examiner relied on Demeester. Final Act. 5—7. Appellants contend the cited portions of Groiselle do not teach the limitation “reconstructing the imaging data ... to generate an event preserving reconstructed image dataset comprising the events of the provided imaging data with, for each event, the timestamp and at least one spatial voxel assignment that assigns the event to a single voxel or to one or more voxels with a membership probability for each voxel,” recited in claim 1. App. Br. 7. Appellants argue that, in Groiselle, the N events are not 4 The Examiner identified claim 19 as also rejected for obviousness over the combination of Groiselle and Busch, but the Examiner indicated in the Office Action Summary (Final Act. 1) and in the body of the Final Action {id. at 22) that claim 19, which depends from claim 18, is not rejected but is objected to. We find the Examiner’s inclusion of claim 19 in the rejection harmless error, and we identify the correct claims above for clarity. 3 Appeal 2016-007863 Application 14/116,358 preserved because the value ?i(b) for each voxel is a scalar value that has no event-preserving capability. Id. at 9. Appellants further argue that there is no preservation of timestamps associated with events. Id. at 7—8. We agree with Appellants that the Examiner erred. The Examiner found that Groiselle’s list mode data set of coincidences teaches the recited “event-preserving reconstructed image dataset.” Ans. 2—3; Final Act. 3, 6 (citing Groiselle Abstract, pp. 2633—34). The Examiner explained that the preservation is by way of a timestamp At associated with a coincidence “d.” Ans. 3. The Examiner, however, has not clearly shown that Groiselle’s list mode data set also comprises “at least one spatial voxel assignment that assigns the event to a single voxel or to one or more voxels with a membership probability for each voxel,” as claim 1 requires. See Reply Br. 3^4. For example, Groiselle merely teaches that “[tjhere are N coincidences recorded in the list-mode data set (d = 1,..., N), and each of these N coincidences has an associated time difference At.” Groiselle, p. 2633. Therefore, Appellants’ arguments have persuaded us of error in the Examiner’s position with respect to the rejection of independent claim 1, independent claims 13 and 20, which recite similar limitations, and claims 2—12, 14, 15, and 21—24, which depend therefrom. DECISION We reverse the decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1—15 and 20-24.5 REVERSED 5 Appellants raise additional arguments. Because the identified issue is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the additional arguments. 4