Ex Parte Wels et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 27, 2016

12558736 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 27, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/558,736 09/14/2009
28524 7590 07/29/2016
SIEMENS CORPORATION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
3501 Quadrangle Blvd Ste 230
Orlando, FL 32817
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Michael Weis
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.
2008Pl8365US01 7080
EXAMINER
REYES, REGINALD R
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3686
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/29/2016 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):
ipdadmin.us@siemens.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte MICHAEL WELS,
GUSTA VO HENRIQUE MONTEIRO DE BARROS CARNEIRO,
MARTIN HUBER, DORIN COMANICIU, and YEFENG ZHENG
Appeal2014-000769
Application 12/558,736
Technology Center 3600
Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, MICHAEL W. KIM, and
CYNTHIA L. MURPHY, Administrative Patent Judges.
CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner's
final decision rejecting claims 1-27. We have jurisdiction over the appeal
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We REVERSE.
Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A method for segmenting a plurality of brain structures in
a 3D magnetic resonance (MR) image, comprising:
Appeal2014-000769
Application 12/558,736
detecting a meta-structure including center positions of
each of said plurality of brain structures in the 3D MR image;
and
individually segmenting at least one of the plurality of
brain structures using marginal space learning (MSL)
constrained by the detected meta-structure.
Appellants appeal the following rejections:
1. Claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 10-12, 15, 19, 20, 23, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Spence (US 2008/0298659 Al, pub. Dec. 4, 2008),
Reiman (US 2005/0283054 Al, pub. Dec. 22, 2005), and Barbu (US
2010/0020208 Al, pub. Jan 28, 2010).
2. Claim 3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Spence, Reiman,
Barbu, and Cox (US 5,751,838, iss. May 12, 1998).
3. Claims 5, 7, 8, 16, 17, 24, and 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Spence, Reiman, Barbu, and Ikuma (US 2008/0306379
Al, pub. Dec. 11, 2008).
4. Claims 9, 18, and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Spence, Reiman, Barbu, Ikuma, and Xu (US 2009/0316988 Al, pub.
Dec. 24, 2009).
ISSUE
Did the Examiner err in rejecting the claims because Spence does not
disclose detecting a meta-structure including center positions of each of said
plurality of brain structures in the 3D MR image?
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Appeal2014-000769
Application 12/558,736
FACTUAL FINDINGS
Appellants' Specification states that embodiments of the present
invention are directed to automated (sub-)cortical brain structure
segmentation in 3D MR images [14]. The term "(sub-) cortical brain
structure" refers to any sub-cortical and/or cortical brain structure such as
the left and right caudate nucleus, hippocampus, globus pallidus, putamen
and amydgala [ 15]. Figure 3 depicts several (sub-)cortical brain structures
such as the left caudate nucleus 302, right caudate nucleus 303, left
hippocampus 304, right hippocampus 305 etc. and their centers as depicted
as 320 [28].
We find that Spence discloses that measurements were made available
for volume elements or voxels [ 11]. Spence teaches that correlations among
normalized voxel counts are large in neighboring voxels and decrease in
magnitude until they become negligible after a critical distance. Based on
this discovery, blocks of contiguous voxels may be defined within each of
several structures within the deep brain so that the geometric centers of the
blocks are not closer than the range at which voxel counts may be considered
uncorrelated.
ANALYSIS
We agree with the Appellants that Spence discloses defining the
centers of blocks of voxels within a brain structure, not detecting the center
position of each of a plurality of brain structures. The blocks of Spence are
comprised of several voxels within a brain structure and it is the center of
these blocks which is defined, not the center of the brain structures
themselves.
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Appeal2014-000769
Application 12/558,736
In view of the foregoing, we will not sustain the Examiner's rejections
of any of the claims, because each of the claims includes the step of
detecting the center positions of each of a plurality of brain structures or a
means for detecting the center positions of each of a plurality of brain
structures.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner is reversed.
REVERSED
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