Appeal No. 2007-0204
Application 10/938,966
in the Brief or Reply Brief that indicates that "disabled" means anything other
than "turned off." It appears that Appellants are now concerned with the
meaning of "disable" in claim 44, which we (and the Examiner) interpreted to
mean "turned off." Nevertheless, since we did equate "disabled" with "turned
off" or "disabled completely," and since the term "disabled" appears in other
claims, we address the interpretation of this term.
Our interpretation of "disabled" as meaning "completely turned off" has
support at several places in the Specification. First, the Specification
discloses "turning off, or disabling both S3 and S4 gradients as is shown in
Fig. 3" (Specification 8), indicating that "disabling" means "turning off"
because Figure 3 shows the gradients completely turned off. Second, the
description of Figure 3 states that "since the slice encoding gradient is
disabled completely in the 2D mode, the acquisition is a true 2D acquisition
and not a low-resolution 3D acquisition" (Specification 8), indicating that
"turning off, or disabling" means "disabled completely" or "inactivated" in a
"2D mode" because Figure 3 shows the gradients turned completely off. If
the gradients were not completely disabled, this would be a
"low-resolution 3D acquisition" and not a "2D mode" as recited in claim 51.
Appellant admits that Figure 3 shows the gradients completely turned off
(Req. Reh'g 3). Third, Figure 4, block 310 indicates that the "3D IMAGING
PULSE SEQUENCE BECOMES 2D IMAGING PULSE SEQUENCE BY
SWITCHING OFF THE SLICE-ENCODING AND REWINDER
GRADIENTS" (emphasis added), indicating that "disable" to acquire a 2D
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