Appeal 2007-1733
Application 09/978,275
these same reasons that the Examiner erred in rejecting dependent claims 2,
3, 12, 13, and 37 through 41 as being anticipated by Vuylsteke.
35 U.S.C. § 103 Rejection
We now turn to the rejection of dependent claims 4 through 6 as being
unpatentable over Vuylsteke, taken in combination with Aach, and/or Wood
under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We find that the cited secondary references fail to
cure the deficiencies of Vuylsteke noted above. For these reasons, we find
that the combination of Vuylsteke with the cited references does not render
the cited claims unpatentable.
Rejection under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b)
We make the following new ground of rejection using our authority
under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b). Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Vuylsteke. As discussed above, we find that
Vuylsteke does not particularly teach adapting the characteristic of the filter
unit to a value of a detail image.2 However, as set forth in the Findings of
Fact section, Vuylsteke recognizes that adjusting filter parameters to the
local image statistics is ideally known in the art for reducing noise in a
radiographic image signal. (Findings 9 and 10.) Therefore, it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Vuylsteke’s
2 In the event, Appellant disagrees with our finding that Vuylsteke’s
production of detail images with corresponding resolutions teaches the
calculation of a first characteristic of an image using information indicating
an exposure dose with which the radiographic image had been produced, we
find alternatively that Vuylsteke in combination with the knowledge in the
prior art (Finding 8) teaches this limitation.
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