The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate-specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer

Song Zheng; Shaoqin Jiang; Zhenlin Chen; Zhangcheng Huang; Wenzhen Shi; Bingqiao Liu; Yue Xu; Yinan Guo; Huijie Yang; Mengqiang Li

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0218645

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 28, 2019
10 Sep 2019 Decision Letter - Isaac Yi Kim, Editor PONE-D-19-16015 The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate-specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Li, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Oct 25 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'. Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Isaac Yi Kim, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In the ethics statement in the manuscript and in the online submission form, please provide additional information about the patient records used in your retrospective study. Specifically, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Interesting evaluation of MRI to predict prostate cancer. Major Points: - Please elaborate on the 13 core biopsy technique you used. I am more familiar with a 12 core sampling of the peripheral zone. Some urologists also perform anterior biopsies for a total of 14 cores. Targeted biopsies based on multiparametric MRI findings are then done. - Were your targeted biopsies "cognitive" or did you use MRI-U/S fusion technology such as Artemis or UroNav? - What percentage of standard biopsies were positive for cancer vs. those targeting a MRI lesion? Minor Points: - Please format the references according to journal specifications. Numerous citations were missing author names. Reviewer #2: Dear Authors: Please clarify - Ethics Statement on Page 3 is “N/A” and the “Materials and Methods” states “Ethics approval was acquired from the IRB…” Please adjust the Ethics statement accordingly. Please clarify: “Material and Methods” states this was “retrospective cohort study” and the “Clinical Date and Variable Definition” states ALP and LDH were collected before biopsy. Was that part of the study or was it standard of care. This is important due to the concern above regarding ethics statement. If you feel appropriate, I would like your thoughts on the existing PIRADs classification used in clinical practice and how it relates to your findings. Editorial comments: Consider defining abbreviations in the abstract (PV, PSAD, TZV etc.) ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes: Biren Saraiya [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218645.r001
Revision 1
19 Oct 2019 Author Response Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer” (Manuscript number: PONE-D-19-16015). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are highlighted in a marked-up copy of my manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as following: Responds to the reviewer’s comments: Reviewer #1: 1. Please elaborate on the 13 core biopsy technique you used. I am more familiar with a 12 core sampling of the peripheral zone. Some urologists also perform anterior biopsies for a total of 14 cores. Targeted biopsies based on multiparametric MRI findings are then done. Response: Thank you for suggesting us to make a more clear statement of the 13-core biopsy technique that we used in our clinical work. As we mentioned in our manuscript, four and two cores were acquired from the left PZ and left TZ, respectively, and four and two cores were acquired from the right PZ and right TZ, respectively. The last core was examined for abnormalities found in imageological examination. The number of biopsy cores still remains inconclusive. In our routine clinical work, we perform standard TRUS-guided 13-core prostate biopsy for patient. 2. Were your targeted biopsies "cognitive" or did you use MRI-U/S fusion technology such as Artemis or UroNav? Response: We are sorry for our negligence of the method of our targeted biopsies. We did use cognitive fusion technology in the last core of biopsy. 3. What percentage of standard biopsies were positive for cancer vs. those targeting a MRI lesion? Response: Thank you for putting forward such a valuable question. The last core, so called cognitive biopsy, was a part of systematic biopsies. We didn’t compare the positve rate of each core. 4. Please format the references according to journal specifications. Numerous citations were missing author names. Response: As Reviewer suggested, our software had something wrong in citing references. But we have fixed it and made correction according to Endnote style file, named “PLoS (Public Library of Science – all journals)”, downloaded from PLOS ONE. Special thanks to you for your good comments. Reviewer #2: 1. Please clarify - Ethics Statement on Page 3 is “N/A” and the “Materials and Methods” states “Ethics approval was acquired from the IRB…” Please adjust the Ethics statement accordingly. Response: It is really true as Reviewer suggested that we missed the ethics approval statement. Ethical approval was acquired from the Institutional Review Board of Fujian Medical University Union Hospital. The approval form of consent was obtained by written with approval number of 2018KY078. Now we have submit the ethics approval statement in submission system. 2. Please clarify: “Material and Methods” states this was “retrospective cohort study” and the “Clinical Date and Variable Definition” states ALP and LDH were collected before biopsy. Was that part of the study or was it standard of care. This is important due to the concern above regarding ethics statement. Response: Thank you for indicating the potential ethics problem. We routinely perform biochemical analysis on patients, which including ALP and LDH. So it is standard of care for patients. 3. If you feel appropriate, I would like your thoughts on the existing PIRADs classification used in clinical practice and how it relates to your findings. Response: Thank you for giving us a hint that will provide a good perspective for improving clinical practice. PIRADs classification is a well-recognized technique that can improve diagnostic performance in prostate cancer. Now we are still working on the PI-RADs v2. And I believe we will get acquainted with it in our next research. Special thanks to you for your good comments. Responds to editor comments: 1.We have ensured that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements through PLOS ONE style templates. If our manuscript still exists any problem, please tell me. 2.The information of patients which we used in our retrospective study has been mentioned in the Clinical data and variable definitions part in our manuscript. We have ensured that all data were fully anonymized before we accessed them. 3.Considering the words limitation of abstract, so we didn’t define abbreviations in the abstract. But as editor suggested, now we have defined abbreviations in the abstract, including PCa, PV, PSAD, TZV, PSADTZ, PZV and PSADPZ. We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.doc https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218645.r002
23 Oct 2019 Decision Letter - Isaac Yi Kim, Editor PONE-D-19-16015R1 The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate-specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Li, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== 1. "Imageoloical" is not a standard word used to describe MRI or other imagings. Please revise the relevant sentence appropriately,. ============================== We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Dec 07 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'. Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Isaac Yi Kim, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218645.r003
Revision 2
25 Oct 2019 Author Response Dear Editors: Thank you for your letter concerning our manuscript entitled “The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer” (Manuscript number: PONE-D-19-16015). This comment is all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied it carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are highlighted in a marked-up copy of my manuscript. The main correction in the paper and the responds is as following: 1. 1. "Imageoloical" is not a standard word used to describe MRI or other imagings. Please revise the relevant sentence appropriately. Response: Thank you for indicating our improper use of words. We have corrected this sentence to make it concise and to the point. We appreciate for Editors’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. Sincerely, Mengqiang Li https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218645.r004
30 Oct 2019 Decision Letter - Isaac Yi Kim, Editor The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate-specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer PONE-D-19-16015R2 Dear Dr. Li, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, Isaac Yi Kim, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218645.r005
Formally Accepted
6 Nov 2019 Acceptance Letter - Isaac Yi Kim, Editor PONE-D-19-16015R2 The roles of MRI-based prostate volume and associated zone-adjusted prostate-specific antigen concentrations in predicting prostate cancer and high-risk prostate cancer Dear Dr. Li: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Isaac Yi Kim Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218645.r006

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