Appeal No. 1997-1655
Application 07/797,893
executing a connected region expanding process onto 3-dimensional voxel data of an object to
extract a region corresponding to a substructure of said object from said 3-dimensional voxel data, said
connected region expansion process starting from a seed voxel and including automatic repetitions of an
expansion substep wherein a plurality of voxels are incorporated into extracted voxels on the condition
that said voxels are adjacent to previously incorporated voxels and satisfy expansion criteria;
executing 3-dimensional perspective projection process onto extracted voxels after each
repetition of said expansion substep is completed to generate and renew image data for a perspective
projection image successively; and
displaying the perspective projection image onto the 2-dimensional display in a realtime manner
simultaneously with repetitions of said expansion substep.
The following references are relied on by the examiner:
Crawford (Crawford ‘202) 4,903,202 Feb. 20, 1990
Crawford (Crawford ‘148) 4,905,148 Feb. 27, 1990
Robb et al (Robb), “Interactive Display and Analysis of 3-D Medical Images,” IEEE Transactionson
Medical Imaging, Vol. 8 no. 3, September 1989, pages 217-226.
The rejection of claim 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, as lacking adequate written
description, has been withdrawn (see Answer, pages 1 and 2).2
The rejection of claims 13 to 15, 17, and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as
being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter regarded as the
invention has been withdrawn (see Answer, page 2).
Claims 13 to 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103. As evidence of obviousness, the
2 The Answer states that "Claim 21 is allowed" (Answer, page 1).
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