Appeal No. 1999-0831
Application No. 08/576,066
“correction with a prepatient collimator,” we note that such
an argument is beside the point since the examiner relied on
Dobbs for such a teaching. In any event, appellants have not
challenged the propriety of combining the teachings of Dobbs
with those of Yamazaki. Instead, appellants argue
(supplemental brief, pages 17 through 19 and 25; reply brief,
pages 1 and 2) that the system in each of the applied
references uses a single-slice detector as opposed to a multi-
slice detector.
The examiner’s contentions to the contrary
notwithstanding, we agree with the appellants’ argument that
the applied references only teach single-slice systems
(Yamazaki, column 5, lines 17 through 21 and column 8, lines 1
through 15 and 64 through 67; Dobbs, column 4, lines 42
through 47 and column 7, line 53 through column 8, line 14).
Although Yamazaki indicates that “there may be provided a
plurality of detectors in the channel direction that is
perpendicular to the slice position” (column 8, lines 64
through 67), Yamazaki never indicates how many rows/columns of
detectors are provided in “the channel direction that is
perpendicular to the slice position.” We refuse to speculate
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