PONE-D-22-12251New mathematical approach to mouth approximation: a geometric morphometrics studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Houlton,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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: The authors have not fully explained how 'racial origin' was established for the subjects. If the data is split by black/white ancestry then we need to know how this was achieved - was it self-classification by the subjects or assessed by the researcher? Either way, the reliability and ethical basis of such racial classification needs to be established and the data made available if researcher assessment (rather than self-classification) was utilised. Additional comments below:

Abstract

Line 7 – should read ‘Frankfurt/Frankfort Horizontal Plane’

Method

Please be consistent with numbers in the text – if less than 100 please use words (except for % or measurements when numbers are used), if 100 or above use numbers.

Explain how the FHP was utilised in 3D – FHP is a 2D plane only (as the left and right planes may not be parallel due to asymmetry) so how was this mitigated?

Page 8 line 2 – replace ‘done’ with ‘carried out’

Overall

This study is detailed and thorough and provides good data in relation to mouth prediction from skeletal assessment.

However, this study does not provide any practical guide for practitioners as a result of the study (a common problem with geometric morphometric analysis), and this should be addressed before acceptance for publication.

Reviewer #2: First, I will like to salute the effort of the authors in investigating in this domain. But I will also like to comment on few things I think necessary for amendment in your study.

1. Your title (New mathematical approach to mouth approximation: a geometric morphometrics study) needs to be corrected, since it does not align with your study. You don't present any new mathematical formula or any new methodology to the investigation of the soft and hard tissues in this domain.

2. The statement "No existing geometric morphometric studies, however, has considered the spatial relationship between hard and soft facial tissues." needs to be corrected in your introduction section. That was too general; you could have said in South African population. Have you considered these research articles?

(a) The Relationship Between Hard Tissue and Soft Tissue Dimensions of the Nose in Children: A 3D Cone Beam Computed Tomography Study (Eman Allam B.D.S., Ph.D.,Philani Mpofu B.A.,Ahmed Ghoneima B.D.S., Ph.D., M.S.,Mihran Tuceryan Ph.D.,Katherine Kula M.S., D.M.D., M.S) 2018

(b) Soft- and hard-tissue facial anthropometry in three dimensions: what’s new (Chiarella Sforza, Marcio de Menezes* & Virgilio F. Ferrario) 2013

3. What method did you use to calculate the inter-landmark distances?

4. Where is your measurement error table? Can you please display the digitisation error table of the Procrustes ANOVA? Also, which literature do you cite in corroboration with your inter-observer measuring technique or how did you arrive at this method?

5. Which version of MorphoJ and PAST did you use; and where is the citation for the PAST software?

6. What was the allometry effect on the cohorts?

7. The two images in Figure 1 (Visual reference to hard and soft tissue landmark coordinates collected for analysis) should be labelled accordingly such as (a) and (b)

8. If you mention that PC1-PC4 captured the major shape variation, where are the labels in your PCA scatter plot? You need to properly label each of the PC images accordingly in the Figures such as PC1, PC2,.... This will help the reviewers to judge which region(s) contributed to the shape variation in each PC.

9. The arrangement of your conclusion was inter-mixed with your discussion section. I think your conclusion should be transferred to the last paragraph of your discussion section while the last two paragraphs (Starting from: "From this study, we have largely identified shape, size and proportional changes related to demographic variables such as age, population, and sex...") should be transferred to the conclusion section. Note that there is a difference between a conclusion and a summary.

Hope you could look critically into these mentioned observations. Thank you.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Azree Nazri

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Visualising trends in dentition to lip mouth morphology using geometric morphometrics

PONE-D-22-12251R1

Dear Dr. Houlton,

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.

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Kind regards,

John Leicester Williams, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: