Recent Patent Trial and Appeal Board Approaches to Patent Claims on Medical Technology Implementing AI

In Ex Parte Lyman, Appeal No. 2022-002753 (PTAB Sept. 25, 2023), an appeal to the PTAB involved technology relating to AI-based analysis of medical scans generated by medical imaging devices. The technology utilizes image data from a medical scan to train machine learning models based on datasets of medical scans and associated labels. The labels relate to pathological abnormality classes, such as atelectasis, effusion, mass, pneumonia, consolidation, emphysema, pleural thickening, cardiomegaly, infiltration, nodule, pneumothorax, edema, fibrosis, and hernia. In relevant part, the claims recited training a generical machine learning model based on a set of medical scan data and training a plurality of anatomical location-based machine learning models by performance of a fine tuning step on the generic machine learning model. In the claims, mutually exclusive subsets of the medical scan data are generated based on different anatomical locations. The claims further recited that, with respect to fine tuning, a subset of the medical scan data relating to an anatomical location is utilized to train a corresponding machine learning model associated with the anatomical location.