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Principal Directorate Patent Grant Automation - Directorate Classification Project: C474 Subject: Image analysis IPC range: G06T 7/00 Comments Date 30-June-2014 EPO thanks all contributors for their useful and extensive comments, and particularly R for his elaborate report. EPO’s comments will follow the structure of this report for easier reference. Comments on Annexes 10, 11 and 12 are included where applicable. Introduction and G06T7/00 (a) In principle, EPO perceives G06T the place for documents that focus on image processing algorithms in general. This means that documents that only mention image processing as a “black box” but do not give any details on how the underlying image processing algorithm works, are outside the scope of G06T. These documents usually go to the technical field, in which the image processing is used as a “black box”; documents that give details on image processing, but this image processing is fundamentally linked to a specific acquisition hardware or display hardware usually go to the specific technical field, e.g. image processing within scanners, printers, fax machines (H04N1), photographic or TV cameras using electronic image sensors (H04N5, 7), stereo cameras and displays (H04N13), also for Magnetic Resonance Imaging [MRI] (G01R33/56) or Computed Tomography [CT] (A61B6). Nevertheless, despite the fact that in principle G06T is a more function-oriented place for general image processing, according to EP practice G06T also covers application oriented places. (b) This principle also holds for G06T7, which is perceived as the function-oriented place for general image analysis algorithms applied to a given 2D, 3D or higher dimensional image. However, according to EPO’s practice G06T7 also contains image analysis for image inspection in the application-oriented sub-group G06T7/0002, as the image analysis algorithms used in these application fields do not substantially differ from general image analysis. (c) It is not clear,