Appeal No. 2006-3040 Page 5
Application No. 10/261,196
[answer, pages 4-8]. With respect to representative claim 1, the examiner essentially
finds that Bick teaches the claimed invention except for teaching that feature extraction is
a type of image segmentation. The examiner cites Schneider as providing this teaching.
The examiner finds that it would have been obvious to the artisan to combine the
teachings of Schneider with Bick [id., pages 4-5].
Appellants argue that the examiner has no basis for equating Bick’s feature
extraction step to the claimed segmenting step and no basis for asserting that Bick’s
segmenting step is carried out at a reduced resolution relative to his feature extraction
step. With respect to the first point, appellants argue that feature extraction is not the
same as segmentation. Appellants assert that even though Schneider defines feature
extraction as a form of segmentation, such definitions do not apply to appellants’
invention. With respect to the second point, appellants argue that Bick fails to point out
the resolution at which segmentation step 101 is carried out, and therefore, it can not be
concluded that the segmentation step is performed at a reduced resolution. Appellants
assert that the examiner has been misled by Bick’s use of the term “maximum
resolution.” Finally, appellants argue that since neither Bick nor Schneider teaches two
segmenting steps as claimed, the combination of Bick and Schneider also fails to teach
these steps [brief, pages 3-9].
With respect to the first point argued above, the examiner responds that Bick also
teaches that feature extraction is a form of segmentation by incorporating the patent
issued to Giger et al. which notes that feature extraction is performed to segment the
lesion from the anatomical background. Thus, the examiner reiterates that the feature
extraction step of Bick is a second segmentation step as claimed. With respect to the
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