PONE-D-22-07252Research on Bridge Crack Detection Based on Improved Single Shot Multi-Box DetectorPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. He,

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.

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Ardashir Mohammadzadeh, Phd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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: No

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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: No

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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: “An improved single-shot multi-box detector (SSD) called ISSD is proposed, which seamlessly

8 combines the depth separable deformation convolution module (DSDCM), inception module (IM), and feature 9 recalibration module (FRM) in a tightly coupled manner to tackle the challenges of bridge crack detection”. I have the following points which need to be properly answered.

Comment #1: The authors do not discuss the figures presented in the experimental results section. This is a critical issue in this section.‎

Comment #2: There are lots of typos. English needs to revise again with a professional editing service. Also, the figures are not clear in some cases.

Comment #3: Mention the limitations and future works of the developed system elaborately.

Comment #4: Several techniques have been described in the Introduction section. How do the authors outperform each of these reviewed systems? A clear statement is needed to highlight the contribution (use the table to discuss each method).

Comment #5: Discuss the stability of the system in terms of complexity.

Comment#6: Detailed evaluation of how the proposed algorithm performs and the varying parameters must be provided. You only provided a learning rate.

Comment#7: All the figures must be in 300dpi.

Comment#8: Parametric settings need to discuss. How you select the parameters in your model?

Comment#9: The conclusion is confusing. You need to change it. Should be according to the body of the manuscript. You must write some findings in the conclusion section.

Comment#10: All the figures are not cited properly in the text.

Reviewer #2: Comments:

1. In line 52, what subjective factors are in consideration should be indicated and elaborated.

2. In lines 59, 61, and 64, the complex environmental noise should be elaborated in terms of its nature and in terms of its effect on detection.

3. There are inconsistencies between SSD layer names in lines 95-100 and SSD layer names in Fig 1. In [21], there is a Conv6 layer as also indicated in line 96, however Figure 1 does not have it.

4. In general, Fig 2 is not digestible as a whole. Please give data structure information (i.e., dimensions) about colored boxes. There are color inconsistencies between figure legend and the figure. It is not evident where the composite structure sits in the architecture nor there is a reference about it in the text. Please carefully review the figure to make it easy to comprehend and more connected to the text.

5. References and the text are not consistent:

- [24] is not work of Zhao et al.

- Lu et al.'s work [25] is not about bridge crack detection as asserted by the authors.

- Feng et al.'s wok [26] is not about bridge crack detection. However, on can stress that they are correlated problems. Just align the previous work and your statements.

6. [28] is not about deformable convolutions. Please update all the references in the manuscript and make them consistent to the text. The manuscript is not scrutable with that state.

7. In Section 3.1.1, deformation convolution is illustrated however it does not give any credit to the its original inventors: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.06211.pdf Please cite properly. ([27] is not that paper.)

8. In Section 3.1.2, in line 160, the reference [29] is not about depth separable convolution. The DOI in [29], doi:10.4271/2014-01-0975, is not a paper titled Xception. It is titled as Fatigue Behavior of Stainless Steel Sheet Specimens at Extremely High Temperatures.

9. WCD dataset does not have any reference, thus not accessible.

NOTE: This manuscript has too many fundamental errors. Please carefully review the paper and then I will be able to read it with a mind in peace.

Thank you.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-22-07252R1Bridge Crack Detection Based on Improved Single Shot Multi-Box DetectorPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. He,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 19 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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.

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). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ardashir Mohammadzadeh, Phd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 am satisfied with new changes. authors addressed my all questions except the one which should be updated in the last version.

1. Discuss the stability of the system in terms of complexity.

Reviewer #2: The work has originality; however, it will be in a better state when the following comments are considered.

1. In the lines 234-243, the authors discuss an improved version of the original inception module and illustrates the improved version at Fig5b. Inception-v3 is presented in the “Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision” of the Szegedy et. al.’s work. The authors should elaborate their improvement of Fig5b over the Fig5 of Szegedy’s Inception-v3 work. If that network is implied, please reference it.

In the Fig.5b, the network concatenates onto “previous layer”, it should be checked.

2. In section 3.1.3, the marriage of depth wise separable convolutions and deformations convolutions proposed. However, its inner structure and mechanism is not explained and illustrated in a figure other then a box in the Fig2. The mechanism of the proposed combination network should be illustrated and explained other than or additional to lines 212-219.

3. The line 285 reads L(x,c,l,g) while eq. (14) doesn’t have such a term.

4. In Section 4, authors compare performance of their proposed network with a non-SSD based networks such as CrackDFA, however, with a quick search, there is another proposed work of Xu et. al. titled “Automatic Bridge Crack Detection Using a Convolutional Neural Network” which is also non-SSD based method however based on the depth wise separable convolutions. Authors are urged to add more literature on the problem of “bridge crack detection” with other NNs not just SSD and add comparisons also on such papers.

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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

Reviewer #2: No

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[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.]

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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PONE-D-22-07252R2Bridge Crack Detection Based on Improved Single Shot Multi-Box DetectorPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. He,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 17 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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.

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). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ardashir Mohammadzadeh, Phd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

Add a direction for readers; add some statements that how the performance can be improved by type-3 fuzzy logic systems;

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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 #2: (No Response)

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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 #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: 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 #2: Yes

**********

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 #2: 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 #2: Thank you for addressing most of my comments. I have concern about one comment I did in the second revision request (Comment 1). I believe I couldn't be clear about it. I originally mentioned about Szegedy’s Inception-v3 work. There are three models of interest that are portrayed in three figures: Figure X, Figure Y, and Figure Z.

Figure X: Figure 2(b) of Going deeper with convolutions (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.4842.pdf).

Figure Y: Figure 5 of Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.00567.pdf).

Figure Z: Figure 6(b) of this manuscript (previously Figure 5(b)).

Figure X is the original Inception module of Szegedy et. al.'s work, that is authors of this manuscript also indicate an improved version over the Figure X.

Figure Y is an improved version of Figure X which is also proposed by Szegedy et. al.

Figure Z is the improved version of Figure X that authors proposes.

In lines 222-238, the authors beautifully explained how this proposed network works and why those layers are chosen. However, I urge the authors to comment on the improvement of the model in Figure Z over the model in Figure Y. In other words, models in Figure Y and Z should be compared.

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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 #2: Yes: Ahmet Agirman

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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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Bridge Crack Detection Based on Improved Single Shot Multi-Box Detector

PONE-D-22-07252R3

Dear Dr. He,

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.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- 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.

Kind regards,

Ardashir Mohammadzadeh, Phd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: