Ex Parte Cai et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Apr 25, 2019

14193574 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Apr. 25, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
14/193,574 02/28/2014 Anming He Cai
79292 7590 04/29/2019
Boston Scientific Corporation
c/o Lowe Graham Jones
701 Fifth Avenue
Suite 4800
Seattle, WA 98104
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
BSCX-1-217.1 4841
EXAMINER
COOK, CHRISTOPHER L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3793
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/29/2019 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):
patentdocketing@lowegrahamjones.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ANMING HE CAI, WENGUANG LI,
SHASHIDHAR SATHYANARAYANA, and
LEWIS JONES THOMAS III 1
Appeal2018-000314
Application 14/193,574
Technology Center 3700
Before CHARLES N. GREENHUT, JAMES P. CALVE, and
LEE L. STEPINA, Administrative Patent Judges.
STEPINA, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims 1-
20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Boston Scientific SciMed, Inc., (Appellant) is listed in the Appeal Brief as
the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 2.
Appeal2018-000314
Application 14/193,574
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to systems and methods2 for lumen border
detection in intravascular ultrasound sequences. Claim 1, reproduced below,
is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method for processing a sequence of intravasular
ultrasound frames for display, the method comprising:
receiving a sequence of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)
frames of a vessel having a lumen, the sequence comprising a
first frame and a second frame, wherein each frame comprises a
plurality of scan lines, each scan line comprising a plurality of
pixels;
determining one or more texture features for each of one
or more regions of the first frame, wherein at least one of the one
or more texture features comprises a difference between intensity
values of i) the region of the first frame and ii) another region of
the first frame spaced apart from the region by at least two pixels;
determining at least one flow feature for each of the one or
more regions by comparing the first and second frames;
deriving a lumen border for the first frame using the one
or more texture features and the at least one flow feature to
characterize the one or more regions as within or outside of the
lumen of the vessel; and
displaying an ultrasound image of the first frame with the
lumen border.
Appeal Br. 14 (Claims App.).
REFERENCES RELIED ON BY THE EXAMINER
Nachtomy US 6,152,878 Nov. 28, 2000
Fritz US 2005/0119555 Al June 2, 2005
Watkins et al., Modern Image Processing: Warping, Morphing, and
Classical Techniques, Academic Press Professional (1993) (hereinafter
"Watkins")
2 Claim 15 recites a computer-readable medium that includes instructions
enabling a device to perform a method. Appeal Br. 16-17 (Claims App.).
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Appeal2018-000314
Application 14/193,574
Katouzian et al., Automatic Detection of Luminal Borders in IVUS
Images by magnitude-Phase Histograms of Complex Brushlet Coefficients,
32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS (Sept. 2010)
(hereinafter "Katouzian")
COS 429: Computer Vision, Linear Filters and Edge Detection
(http://www.cs. princeton. edu/ courses/ arc hi ve/fall08/ cos4 2 9 /lecture_linear_fi
lters_edge_detection.pdf) (hereinafter "COS 429")
THE REJECTIONS ON APPEAL
I. Claims 1-11, 15, 16, 18, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Nachtomy, Fritz, and Watkins. 3
II. Claims 12-14, 17, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Nachtomy, Fritz, Watkins, and Katouzian.
OPINION
Rejection I
Appellant argues for the patentability of the claims subject to the first
ground of rejection, i.e., claims 1-11, 15, 16, 18, and 19, as a group. Appeal
Br. 6-12. We select claim 1 as representative of the group, and claims 2-11,
15, 16, 18, and 19 stand or fall with claim 1. 37 C.F.R. § 4I.37(c)(l)(iv).
The Examiner finds that N achtomy discloses many of the steps recited
in claim 1, but does not disclose determining textural features by calculating
a difference between intensity values in the same image frame that are
spaced apart from each other by at least two pixels. Final Act. 2--4. The
Examiner finds that the teachings of Fritz and Watkins remedy this
deficiency inasmuch as Fritz discloses a lateral filter for reducing noise to
3 COS 429 is cited in the Final Office Action and Answer as evidence of the
mathematical operations the Examiner finds occur in the method disclosed
by Watkins. See Final Act. 10, Ans. 5---6.
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Appeal2018-000314
Application 14/193,574
better discern anatomical features, and Watkins discloses image edge
enhancement via filtering that is dependent upon the differences in intensity
between pixels. Id. at 4--5 (citing Fritz ,r 98, Watkins, p. 55). With respect
to the requirement in claim 1 that the two regions of the frame used to
determine the "texture feature" be spaced apart by at least two pixels, the
Examiner finds that Watkins discloses an example of a kernel 4 of a size
large enough to provide the required two-pixel separation. Ans. 3--4 ( citing
Watkins, p. 57). The Examiner reasons
it would have been obvious to a person skilled in the art to have
modified the IVUS classification as described by Nachtomy to
have included an additional "texture" feature determining means
(e.g. lateral filter) as described by Fritz and to have specifically
used an "enlarged" horizontal edge determining filter as
described by Watkins in order to distinguish/identify common
IVUS anatomical features ( e.g. horizontal lumen edges) using
conventional filtering. Such a modification is considered to be
combining prior art elements according to known methods to
yield predictable results ( e.g. edge enhancement/detection).
Ans. 4--5. 5 The Examiner also determines that choosing "the filter as
described above could be seen as useful to one skilled in the art depending
on the specificity needed to segment or identify anatomical features in an
ultrasound image," and "the selection of the filter kernel size is an obvious
4 A "kernel" as used in the prior art is a numerical matrix of values that
correlate to a quantifiable characteristic of a pixel located in a corresponding
position, and such kernels are used in various filtering techniques in image
processing. See Watkins, p. 41--42, COS 429, p. 5.
5 The Examiner refers to COS 429, p. 21 as evidence that the subtraction
step to determine the "difference between intensity Values" recited in claim
1 occurs in the kernel the Examiner proposes to implement in Nachtomy.
Ans. 5---6.
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Appeal2018-000314
Application 14/193,574
design choice in the absence of showing any criticality of unexpected
result." Id. at 6.
Appellant notes that the specific example of a kernel set forth on page
57 of Watkins relates to a filter for finding a horizontal line. Reply Br. 6-8.
Appellant contends that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not tum to
the teachings of such a kernel and filter when considering modifying the
method taught by Nachtomy because a lumen border, as disclosed by
Nachtomy, is a circular shape, not a horizontal line. See id.
Even assuming as correct Appellant's allegation that the shape
addressed by the example on page 57 of Watkins and the shape of a lumen
border are different, the argument that such differences preclude the
combination of teachings proposed by the Examiner rests on a bodily
incorporation of an example disclosed on page 57 of Watkins. This is not
the proper obviousness inquiry. "It is well-established that a determination
of obviousness based on teachings from multiple references does not require
an actual, physical substitution of elements." In re Mouttet, 686 F. 3d 1322,
1332 (Fed. Cir. 2012); see also KSR Int 'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398,
421 (2007) ("[a] person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary
creativity, not an automaton").
In light of the general teaching in Watkins that "[i]ncreased kernel
sizes result in highly selective filtering at the cost of added computation[,
and f]ilters that resemble more precisely details within the image are referred
to as matched filters" (Watkins, p. 57 (emphasis added)), followed by the
specific example of such an increased kernel size applied to one shape ( a
horizontal line), we agree with the Examiner that a person of ordinary skill
in the art would have had reason to implement such a solution in the method
disclosed by Nachtomy. Even if, as asserted by Appellant, "the horizontal
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Application 14/193,574
edge filter on page 57 of Watkins would provide little help in deriving the
lumen border because the lumen is generally circular" (Reply Br. 8),
Appellant makes no argument that the general teachings in Watkins,
provided immediately before this limited example, would be applicable only
to horizontal lines. Indeed, Watkins' expressly preempts such an argument.
See Watkins, p. 55 ("So far we have used only 3 x 3 filter kernels. Certainly
if we are attempting to highlight horizontal edges, we will be able to, but
other edges such as diagonal edges may also be highlighted. To combat this
problem, we must increase our kernel size."). Thus, Appellant's argument
regarding the specific shape of object addressed by the example on page 57
of Watkins does not apprise us of Examiner error. We sustain the rejection
of claims 1-11, 15, 16, 18, and 19 are rejected as unpatentable over
Nachtomy, Fritz, and Watkins
Rejection II
Appellant makes no additional arguments traversing Rejection II. See
Appeal Br. 13; Reply Br. 9. Accordingly, we sustain Rejection II for the
same reasons we sustain Rejection I.
DECISION
The Examiner's rejection of claims 1-20 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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