	US 11,199,486 C1 (12,551st)
	Particle characterisation
Jason Corbett, Malvern (GB); and Alex Malm, Malvern (GB)
Filed by Malvern Panalytical Limited, Malvern (GB)
Assigned to MALVERN PANALYTICAL LIMITED, Malvern (GB)
Reexamination Request No. 90/019,205, May 6, 2023.
Reexamination Certificate for Patent 11,199,486, issued Dec. 14, 2021, Appl. No. 16/496,027, Sep. 20, 2019.
PCT Filed Mar. 20, 2018, PCT No. PCT/EP2018/057033 § 371(c)(1), (2) Date Sep. 20, 2019, PCT Pub. No. WO2018/172362, PCT Pub. Date Sep. 27, 2018.
Claims priority of application No. 17162676 (EP), filed on Mar. 23, 2017.
Ex Parte Reexamination Certificate issued on Mar. 22, 2024.
Int. Cl. G01N 15/02 (2024.01); G01N 15/0205 (2024.01); G01N 15/00 (2006.01)

CPC G01N 15/0211 (2013.01) [G01N 2015/0053 (2013.01); G01N 2015/0222 (2013.01)]

AS A RESULT OF REEXAMINATION, IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THAT:

Claims 11 and 12 are cancelled.

Claims 1, 13 and 14 are determined to be patentable as amended.

Claims 2, 5, 15 and 16, dependent on an amended claim, are determined to be patentable.

Claims 3, 4 and 6-10 were not reexamined.

1. A method of characterising particles in a sample, comprising:

obtaining a scattering measurement comprising a time series of measurements of scattered light from a detector, the scattered light produced by the interaction of an illuminating light beam with the sample [ and the time series of measurements comprises a sequence of photon pulses] ;

[ binning the sequence of photon pulses into bins, wherein each bin corresponds with a time period;]

producing a corrected scattering measurement, comprising compensating for scattering contributions from contaminants by reducing a scattering intensity in at least some time periods of the scattering measurement;

determining a particle characteristic from the corrected scattering measurement, wherein reducing the scattering intensity comprises [ :

correcting selected bins by deleting a number of photon pulses from each selected bin; and]

determining a contaminant parameter from the scattering measurement, wherein the step of reducing the scattering intensity is responsive to the contaminant parameter.

13. The method of claim 12 [ 1] , wherein reducing the scattering intensity comprises determining a model of scattering contributions from contaminants, the model comprising an estimate of the number of photon pulses in each bin due to scattering from a contaminant, and correcting the selected bins comprises deleting a number of photon pulses based on the estimate for each selected bin.

14. An apparatus for characterising particles, comprising: a light source, a sample cell, a detector and a processor; wherein

the light source is operable to illuminate a sample within the sample cell with a light beam so as to produce scattered light by interactions of the light beam with the sample;

the detector is configured to detect the scattered light and produce a time series of measurements [ comprising a sequence of photon pulses] ; and

the processor is configured to:

obtain a scattering measurement comprising a [ the ] time series of measurements of the scattered light from the detector;

[ bin the sequence of photon pulses into bins, wherein each bin corresponds with a time period;]

produce a corrected scattering measurement, comprising compensating for scattering contributions from contaminants by reducing a scattering intensity in at least some time periods of the scattering measurement;

determine a particle characteristic from the corrected scattering measurement, wherein reducing the scattering intensity comprises [ :

determining a threshold scattering intensity from an average scattering intensity from the scattering measurement;

selecting bins that have a scattering intensity outside of the threshold scattering intensity;

correcting the selected bins by deleting a number of photon pulses from each selected bin; and]

determining a contaminant parameter from the scattering measurement, wherein the step of reducing the scattering intensity is responsive to the contaminant parameter.