PONE-D-20-12468

A study of evaluating specific tissue oxygen saturation values of gastrointestinal tumors by removing adherent substances in oxygen saturation imaging

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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"Tomonori Yano received a research grant from FUJIFILM; however, this was not a conflict of interest. Oxygen saturation imaging was provided by FUJIFILM Corporation for the clinical study. Other authors have no conflicts of interest."

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: In this paper Nishihara and colleagues discuss about the efficacy of a new algorithm to evaluate specific tissue oxygen saturation values of gastrointestinal tumors by removing adherent substances in oxygen saturation imaging. The paper topic is potentially interesting because it highlights the possibility of a new, less invasive method to discriminate precancerous or cancerous areas in GI lesions using the superficial tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) and plotting different tumor areas to differentiate neoplastic tissue from other confounding variables such as adherent substances (blood clot ect).

Hovewer even if the topic could be interesting there are some major concerns about the paper content that could be considered before eventual pubblication:

1) In material and methods there is no specification about tumor type, site, size, grading and general stadiation (T and N stage by CT scan or eus or PET). There is a table but these fundamental informations are not integrated in the text and this can be misleading. Moreover the authors do not specify if this heterogeneous cluster of lesions can be matched or could affect the results they discuss later in the text.

2) the entire result section is almost confusing. It's not specify how the authors utilize the algorithm, how they decide to apply it (indications by the Fujifilm i.e?) and in general the results are showed using the figures but they are not clearly explained so it's difficult to read this part.

3) the abstract section has to be re written starting from the over mentioned point.

4) the discussion is also not to clear because the authors do not specify how the results can be used in the clinical practice probably it's due to the unclear results section too.

Reviewer #2: As mentioned by the authors, the main limits of this study are the limited number of patients and that the annotation point were selected randomly and by only two endoscopist. This could affect the reliability of this algorithm, that should be validated in a larger multi-center study in order to evaluate the reproducibility of this algorithm.

However, this study try to overcome the limitations of this new technology, which could have interesting applications in gastrointestinal tumors in the next future.

I suggest to the authors to largely explain in the discussion the possible future applications on this technology and largely explain the differences with other diagnostic imaging methods.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLOS DOC 20-12467.docx

A study of evaluating specific tissue oxygen saturation values of gastrointestinal tumors by removing adherent substances in oxygen saturation imaging

PONE-D-20-12468R1

Dear Dr. Yano,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Qinghui Zhang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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2. 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

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. 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

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5. 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

**********

6. 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: I think that the authors modified the paper in the proper manner, addressing clearly all the points eraised in the previous review. Congrats

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7. 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