PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15764830
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-03
Publication Date: 2018-09
Patent Classification: ["348", "080000"]

Abstract:
This application discloses a tools and techniques for using a remote-focusing element (such as an electro-tunable lens) to provide enhanced focusing in an all-optical digital scanning microscopy system. The remote-focusing element can imaging of different sections of the specimen without moving the specimen itself, while at the same time providing the ability to correct for non-uniform indices of refraction in the imaged specimen and/or the surrounding medium which can cause misalignment between the imaged plane and the illuminated plane, which can result in loss focus in the imaged section of the specimen. The remote-focusing element can also obviate the need to move the detection stage and/or the illumination stage of the system to image different sections, eliminating vibration during the imaging process.

Claim (Index 21):
A method for remote focusing all-optical digital scanning light sheet comprising:\n providing a remote focusing all-optical digital scanning light sheet microscopy system having at least an illumination side optics, a detection objective, and image detector; providing an electro-tunable lens positioned in a detection path of the detection objective, wherein a focal length of the electro-tunable lens is adjustable electrically as a function of electrical current supplied by a driver; generating a light sheet, via the illumination side optics, at a first position of a first section, wherein the illumination plane of the light sheet illuminates the first section; aligning, via the electro-tunable lens, a focal plane of the detection objective to the first position, the first position being an expected position of the illumination plane of the light sheet such that the focal plane and illumination plane coincide, wherein the detection axis of the detection objective is substantially orthogonal to the illumination plane of the light sheet; capturing, via the image detector, a first image of the first section detected by the detection objective; determining whether the first image of the first section is within a focus tolerance range, wherein the focus tolerance range specifies a threshold focus level for a captured image; identifying at least one out-of-focus feature in the first image of the first section; adjusting, via the driver of the electro-tunable lens, the focal length of the electro-tunable lens, wherein the focal plane of the detection objective is shifted to coincide with the position of the illumination plane of the light sheet at the at least one out-of-focus feature; and capturing a second image of the first section having the at least one out-of-focus feature in focus.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 56.0
- Percentile: 90.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.68831
- Patent Class: 348.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['13968220', '15266310', '15719299', '15695484', '15680075']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.5944486282025001
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4698494473605923
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.5819887101183093
- Mean Citation Score: 189.394448
- Max Citation Score: 194.38135
- Similarity Product: 157.8715871440053

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 0
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test