PONE-D-22-09269Effective and Efficient Content-Based Similarity Retrieval of Large Lung CT Image Database Based on WSSEN ModelPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhuang,

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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1. The authors need to re-write the abstract again to show the objective of this paper clearly.

2. Introduction section needs to be finished with summary and the contribution should be pointed out. 

3. The proposed approach each stage is not discussed in details, nor each stage is interlink appropriately and the discussion is very poor. Please revise it carefully.

4. The author also needs to make a clear conclusion/novelty at the end of each sub-section of methodology. 

5. In result section, the authors require to present clear details about the data analysis.

6. The following recent studies on should be discussed in related work;

Content-based image retrieval and semantic automatic image annotation based on the weighted average of triangular histograms using support vector machine, 2018

Query-by-visual-search: multimodal framework for content-based image retrieval, 2020

Boosting the performance of the BoVW model using SURF–CoHOG-based sparse features with relevance feedback for CBIRA novel image retrieval based on rectangular spatial histograms of visual words, 2018A Novel Image Retrieval Based on a Combination of Local and Global Histograms of Visual Words, 2016

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Zahid Mehmood, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement:

“This work was supported in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.Y22F021788; the Zhejiang Public Welfare Technology Application Research Project under grant No.GF22H185665; the Zhejiang Medical and Health Research Project under grant No. 2019RC070.”

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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: Yes

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: 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 paper should be interesting ;;;

-please add block diagram of the proposed research;;;

-What is the result of the analysis?;;

-please add photos of the application of the proposed research, 2-3 photos ;;;

-figures should have high quality;;;

-what will society have from the paper?;;

-please try to compare the proposed analysis with other papers for example:

"Role of Hybrid Deep Neural Networks (HDNNs), Computed Tomography, and Chest X-rays for the Detection of COVID-19",

"A Novel Method for COVID-19 Diagnosis Using Artificial Intelligence in Chest X-ray Images".

-Conclusion: point out what have you done;;;;

-please add some sentences about future work;;;

-references should be from the web of science 2020-2022 (50% of all references, 30 references at least);;;

Reviewer #2: Author required to compare the proposed results with the existing method.

Parameters analysed for the results are very minimal for accurate finding need to incorporated more parameters

Complexity of the system was not discussed anywhere in the manuscript

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Effective and Efficient Content-Based Similarity Retrieval of Large Lung CT Images Based on WSSLN Model

PONE-D-22-09269R1

Dear Dr. Zhuang,

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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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,

Zahid Mehmood, PhD

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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reviewer #2: Author has addressed the queries and now it is in accepted form.

Existing and proposed data are tabulated in the result section

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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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