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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 19 2025 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.

• 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,

Xiongkuo Min

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. 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 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager.

3. We note that you have indicated that there are restrictions to data sharing for this study. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. 

Before we proceed with your manuscript, please address the following prompts:

a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., a Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, etc.). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. You also have the option of uploading the data as Supporting Information files, but we would recommend depositing data directly to a data repository if possible.

We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

4. In the online submission form, you indicated that the data used in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.

All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information.

This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval. 

5. We note that Figure 1 and 2 in your submission contain copyrighted images. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 and 2 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. 

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

“I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.”

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an ""Other"" file with your submission. 

In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].”

b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

6. We note that Figure 4 includes an image of a [patient / participant / in the study]. 

As per the PLOS ONE policy (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research) on papers that include identifying, or potentially identifying, information, the individual(s) or parent(s)/guardian(s) must be informed of the terms of the PLOS open-access (CC-BY) license and provide specific permission for publication of these details under the terms of this license. Please download the Consent Form for Publication in a PLOS Journal (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=8ce6/plos-consent-form-english.pdf). The signed consent form should not be submitted with the manuscript, but should be securely filed in the individual's case notes. Please amend the methods section and ethics statement of the manuscript to explicitly state that the patient/participant has provided consent for publication: “The individual in this manuscript has given written informed consent (as outlined in PLOS consent form) to publish these case details”. 

If you are unable to obtain consent from the subject of the photograph, you will need to remove the figure and any other textual identifying information or case descriptions for this individual.

7. Please upload a new copy of Figure 1, 2, 3, and 4 as the detail is not clear. Please follow the link for more information: https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2019/06/looking-good-tips-for-creating-your-plos-figures-graphics/"" https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2019/06/looking-good-tips-for-creating-your-plos-figures-graphics/

[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?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: The article was reviewed under the title "Infrared and visible image fusion method based on sub-window variance filter and weighted least squares optimization".

Overall, the focus of the study is good. However, I would like to offer several recommendations that authors may find useful in the process of revising their manuscript:

1- The abstract is very general, and it is necessary to provide more details in the abstract, given the variety of topics discussed.

2- Considering the classification of Related works into two categories: conventional methods and deep learning, it is better to examine more of the activities carried out in order to compare and show the strengths.

3- Considering the superiority of the model, if the challenges of previous research are examined, it can enrich the effectiveness of the article.

4- The article states that the weight factor (CK) is divided into 4 sub-windows. Are the 4 sub-windows specified by the authors or is it a fixed value?

5- If the authors chose 4 sub-windows, what was the reason for choosing this value?

6- Although the evaluation criteria used are well-known, it is better to include their full text in a footnote the first time their summary is used in the text of the article.

7- In the tables where the evaluation criteria obtained are compared with other studies, in some cases the criteria obtained by other researchers have a slight advantage, but the authors have stated that their model has superiority.

Reviewer #2: 1- The title should be improved.

2- The objectives and the rationale of the study are recommended to be clearly stated.

3- The concluding remarks of the abstract are not well-written. It's merely the repetition of the objectives and title of the manuscript. Please add method limitations and justification to the abstract.

4- The innovation of using this study is not very clear. I do not see a clear reason that this study can perform better than others. Why did the authors choose the method for this study?

5- The necessity & novelty of the manuscript should be presented and stressed in the "Introduction" section.

6- The application/theory/method/study reported is not in sufficient detail to allow for its replicability and/or reproducibility. Therefore, it is suggested to make it clear to show all steps to build the model.

7- The problem statement and gap study are not clear.

8- The method is not clear. Therefore, it must be shown and clarified to show all steps.

9- The interpretation of results and study conclusions are not supported by providing the reasons behind why they show that. Therefore, it is recommended to deepen the discussion.

10- It is recommended to emphasize the strengths of the study clearly.

11- The limitations of the study should be stated.

12- The manuscript structure, flow, or writing needs some improvements.

13- The manuscript is benefit from language editing. The English of the paper is readable; however, I would suggest the authors to have it checked preferably by a native English-speaking person to avoid any mistakes.

14- I noticed that the conclusion section tends to repeat the abstract and results. The conclusion paragraph should be short, impactful, and direct the reader to this research's next steps and opportunities.

15- It will be nice to add some new references to show that your study is updated, such as: Zhou, Zhanxin, and Ruibo Wu. "Stock Price Prediction Model Based on Convolutional Neural Networks." Journal of Industrial Engineering and Applied Science 2.4 (2024): 1-7; Alakbari, Fahd Saeed, et al. "Prediction of critical total drawdown in sand production from gas wells: Machine learning approach." The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering 101.5 (2023): 2493-2509.; Alakbari, Fahd Saeed, et al. "Deep learning approach for robust prediction of reservoir bubble point pressure." ACS omega 6.33 (2021): 21499-21513.; Alakbari, Fahd Saeed, et al. "A gated recurrent unit model to predict Poisson's ratio using deep learning." Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 16.1 (2024): 123-135; Zhou, Zhanxin, and Ruibo Wu. "Stock Price Prediction Model Based on Convolutional Neural Networks." Journal of Industrial Engineering and Applied Science 2.4 (2024): 1-7; Wu, Ruibo, Tao Zhang,

Reviewer #3: 1. In the process of introducing the sub - window variance filter (SVF) and weighted least squares optimization (WLSO), the following aspects need to be improved:

- Provide a more detailed explanation of the derivation steps of key formulas to help readers understand their mathematical principles. For some assumptions, clarify their rationality and basis.

2. Elaborate on the selection method and basis of the regularization parameter in SVF and the balance coefficient in WLSO. It is feasible to compare the effects of different parameter values on the fusion results through experiments and provide recommended parameter ranges.

3. The quantitative analysis indicators are not rich enough. We hope to add some evaluation indicators such as the message fusion quantity QAB/F. It should be noted that adding different evaluation indicators may lead to optimal conflicts, and we can truthfully explain the reasons.

4. The research motivation of the paper indicates that this method addresses the existing complex computational difficulties. However, the algorithm complexity analysis was not provided in the experimental section of this paper. (The running time can indirectly substitute for the complexity analysis.)

5. The references in the introduction section of the paper are too outdated. We hope to supplement or replace some with the latest literature, such as FusionOC, FusionPID, FusionCPP, etc. The more, the better.

Reviewer #4: This paper presents an infrared and visible image fusion method based on sub-window variance filter and weighted least squares optimization.

The studied topic is meaningful, and the proposed method seems reasonable.

The authors may further improve the paper from the following aspects.

Some overview papers are suggested to be given for better referring of the relevant topics, for example visual quality and its modeling, e.g., ‘Perceptual image quality assessment: a survey’; ‘Perceptual video quality assessment: a survey’; ‘Screen content quality assessment: overview, benchmark, and beyond’.

Multimodal fusion as well as visual saliency are introduced in this paper, which have been involved in many studies (e.g., ‘Study of subjective and objective quality assessment of audio-visual signals’; ‘Fixation prediction through multimodal analysis’; ‘A multimodal saliency model for videos with high audio-visual correspondence’). The authors may give some discussions on this aspect and the related works.

In the literatures, besides quality metrics designed for image fusion quality assessment, there are also many general quality visual quality metrics, e.g., BPRI (Blind quality assessment based on pseudo-reference image), BMPRI (Blind image quality estimation via distortion aggravation), RichIQA (Exploring rich subjective quality information for image quality assessment in the wild), which are also suggested to reviewed and discussed.

**********

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

Reviewer #3: Yes:  Linlu Dong

Reviewer #4: No

**********

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: comments.docx

Saliency-Enhanced Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Sub-Window Variance Filter and Weighted Least Squares Optimization

PONE-D-24-56535R1

Dear Dr. Li,

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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager®  and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

Mahmoud Emam, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Comments from PLOS Editorial Office : We note that one or more reviewers has recommended that you cite specific previously published works in the current and previous rounds of revision. As always, we recommend that you please review and evaluate the requested works to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. It is not a requirement to cite these works and you may remove any added citations before the manuscript proceeds to publication. We appreciate your attention to this request.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: The article titled “Saliency-Enhanced Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Sub-Window Variance Filter and Weighted Least Squares Optimization”.

This revision has significantly improved the manuscript, and the authors have satisfactorily addressed my concerns. However, regarding the highlighted additions, I did not see the points made in recommendation number 3, which were marked in blue. Nonetheless, these recent changes have captured my attention.

Reviewer #2: authors addressed all comments

authors addressed all comments

authors addressed all comments

authors addressed all comments

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #3: Yes:  Linlu Dong

**********