Appeal No. 97-2699
Application 08/112,535
Appellant's particular claimed combination of method steps or apparatus for selecting and using an
optimized filter based on a most frequently occurring size appearing in an image is not taught or
suggested in the prior art cited in the Examiner's answer.
On page 7 of the answer, the Examiner argues that Barry teaches the concept of a
matched filtering in column 1. The Examiner provides a quote from Barry which is found in column 1,
lines 40-43.
Upon a review of Barry, we find that Barry does teach that an ideal filter is a matched
filter where the output signal-to-noise ratio is maximized. However, Barry does not provide any
teaching on how an ideal filter may be obtained or in particular a method or apparatus for selecting an
optimal filter based on most frequent occurring size of features in an original image. Furthermore, we
fail to find any suggestion in Moorehead, Gonzales and Toriu to provide a method or apparatus which
passes the original image through a first filter to smooth the image, performing a profile analysis of the
smoothed image to determine the size of any feature in the original image, performing an analysis to
determine the most frequently occurring size, selecting an optimal filter based on the most frequently
occurring size and using the optimal filter to filter the original image to extract the most frequently
occurring feature as recited in Appellant's claims 1 through 27. Therefore, we will not sustain the
Examiner's rejection claims 1, 2, 6 through 8, 12 through 15 and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
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Last modified: November 3, 2007