Appeal No. 2003-0303
Application 09/096,521
Having reviewed and evaluated the Nelson patent,
Chance and the APA, we share appellants’ assessment of the
examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3 through 7 and 9 through
11 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and agree with appellants that
the examiner has not shown any teaching, suggestion, or
incentive in the applied references or the APA for modifying
the X-ray imaging phantom of Nelson to arrive at the claimed
subject matter. More specifically, in our view there is no
teaching or suggestion in the applied prior art of a breast-
shaped phantom having both 1) a cup forming an outer skin of
the phantom having a thickness similar to human skin
and having optical transparency at selected optical wave-
lengths similar to human skin; and 2)a filler material in
the cup having optical scattering and absorption character-
istics to simulate human breast tissue when imaged by an
optical imaging device and also detectable by magnetic
resonance imaging to create an MRI image. Thus, the prior
art relied upon by the examiner would not have been sug-
gestive of modifying the phantom of Nelson for imaging by
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