Interference No. 103,197
tissue[]" (Page 185, Section 2, first sentence; and Page
197, line 13) would be appropriate. Accordingly, in my
opinion, Kapany clearly teaches using any of the probes
of figure 7.16 as well as the probes of figure 7.18 for
examination of living tissue in general and in particular
for oximetry.
We agree, up to a point. As noted earlier, the first
paragraph of Section 3 ("In Vivo Spectrophotometry") states
that "[w]hen the specimen is located subcutaneously, then it
is possible to use a fiber optics hypodermic probe in which a
rigid fiber bundle is used to illuminate the specimen as well
as to return the signal to the detector for
[spectrophotometric] processing" (sentence bridging pp. 189-
90). We agree that it would have been obvious to employ any
of the hypodermic probe configurations of Figure 7.16 for this
purpose, even though they are described only in connection
obtaining images for microscopic viewing. Thus, it would have
been obvious to use the hypodermic probe apparatus of Figure
7.16(b) or 7.16(c) to perform an invasive spectrophotometric
analysis of the tissue between the probe tips by comparing the
light that is emitted by one probe with the light that is
transmitted through the tissue and received by the other.
However, while Kapany broadly suggests invasive
transilluminative spectrophotometric analysis of tissue, he
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