Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionMarch 4, 2025 |
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PONE-D-25-09738Classification of Current Density Vector Map Using Transformer Hybrid Residual NetworkPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hu, 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 Nov 27 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
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Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse. 3. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U2341246, in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2018YFA0701400, in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LD22F050003, in part by Great Discipline of Shanghai Minhang District under Grant 2024MWDXK03, in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LD25A040002. Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U2341246, in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2018YFA0701400, in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LD22F050003, in part by Great Discipline of Shanghai Minhang District under Grant 2024MWDXK03, in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LD25A040002. We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U2341246, in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2018YFA0701400, in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LD22F050003, in part by Great Discipline of Shanghai Minhang District under Grant 2024MWDXK03, in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LD25A040002. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. For studies involving third-party data, we encourage authors to share any data specific to their analyses that they can legally distribute. PLOS recognizes, however, that authors may be using third-party data they do not have the rights to share. When third-party data cannot be publicly shared, authors must provide all information necessary for interested researchers to apply to gain access to the data. (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-acceptable-data-access-restrictions) For any third-party data that the authors cannot legally distribute, they should include the following information in their Data Availability Statement upon submission:a) A description of the data set and the third-party sourceb) If applicable, verification of permission to use the data setc) Confirmation of whether the authors received any special privileges in accessing the data that other researchers would not haved) All necessary contact information others would need to apply to gain access to the data 6. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 7. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. 8. 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. [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? 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 ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 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: No ********** 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 ********** 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: 1.Several instances in the manuscript show multiple references cited within a single sentence without clear separation. Please ensure each reference is distinctly and correctly formatted. 2.Avoid using keywords such as “we”, “us” and “you” in the manuscript. Academic writing should maintain a formal and objective tone throughout. 3.The following reference appears to be incomplete or unverifiable: “31. He X, Huang Y, Li S, Su S, Zheng W, Hu Z, Lin Q. Measurement of cardiac magnetic field based on atomic magnetometry. Chinese Journal of Medical Physics, 2017.” Please provide a valid citation with complete bibliographic details or evidence of its availability. 4.The results claim 100% accuracy, which may appear unrealistic in practical scenarios. Kindly justify this outcome and explain how further research or improvement is still relevant in the context of your proposed model. Reviewer #2: This paper proposes a novel deep learning model that combines a ResNet-18 backbone with a Transformer encoder (ResNet-TL-TE) to classify Magnetocardiogram-derived Current Density Vector Maps (CDVMs) into five clinical categories. To overcome a small original dataset, the authors employed data augmentation techniques including noise addition, autoregressive modeling, and interpolation. The model utilizes transfer learning from a pretrained resnet on ImageNet and leverages Transformers to capture global dependencies in the CDVM data. The proposed method achieves a high test accuracy of 97.52%, outperforming baseline benchmark. The paper is generally well-written and easy to follow. The abstract is well-structured and summarizes the paper effectively. It could be slightly improved by explicitly mentioning the “outperforming previous approaches like ResNet-LSTM” The introduction is excellent. It successfully establishes the clinical importance of MCG and CDVM, clearly identifies the existing challenges (data scarcity, judgment difficulty), and logically leads to the need for a computer-aided method. The literature review is adequate and relevant. It covers early works (k-NN), recent deep learning approaches (MCG-Net), and related works using ResNet/Transformers in cardiac analysis The methodology is mostly thorough. The data preprocessing, augmentation strategies, and dataset partitioning are explained in great detail. The rationale for choosing ResNet-18, transfer learning, and the Transformer encoder is well-justified. The training strategy (hyperparameter optimization, optimizer, overfitting prevention) is clearly described. The results are internally consistent. The ablation study (ResNet < ResNet-TE < ResNet-TL < ResNet-TL-TE) logically shows the incremental benefit of each component. The high performance on the test set is consistent with the strong validation performance. Possible limitations of the study: Given the very small original dataset, even if the augmentation is extensive and the subject-wise split is correct, the final model's performance, however impressive, must be viewed with caution regarding its generalizability to entirely new populations and clinical settings. The authors correctly acknowledge this as a limitation. The class distribution is also highly imbalanced (e.g., Category 4 vs. Category 0), which, while perhaps reflective of reality, can bias a model. The high specificity scores might be influenced by this. The conclusion is well-written. It succinctly restates the main achievement (the proposed model and its SOTA accuracy), summarizes the significant contributions, and, importantly, acknowledges the key limitations (small original dataset, potential for architectural optimization). The future directions (larger datasets, lightweight models) are sensible and appropriate. It effectively closes the paper without overstating the findings. Minor comment: The figures are well-prepared and visually clear. However, captions are missing — each figure currently includes only a title. Figures should be self-contained, with detailed captions that describe all subpanels, symbols, and relevant details to ensure clarity without referring back to the main text. ********** 6. 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: Yes: Meenu Gupta Reviewer #2: 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. |
| Revision 1 |
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Classification of Current Density Vector Map Using Transformer Hybrid Residual Network PONE-D-25-09738R1 Dear Dr. Hu, 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. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support. 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, Agnese Sbrollini 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 ********** 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 ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes 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 #1: Yes 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 #1: Yes 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 #1: Multiple references are cited at one place; thats not a good practice. Other commments are addressed Reviewer #2: I am satisfied with the revisions. The figures now have self-contained captions as suggested. I recommend accepting the paper. ********** 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: Yes: Dr. Meenu Gupta Reviewer #2: No ********** |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-25-09738R1 PLOS One Dear Dr. Hu, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS One. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset You will receive further instructions from the production team, including instructions on how to review your proof when it is ready. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few days to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. You will receive an invoice from PLOS for your publication fee after your manuscript has reached the completed accept phase. If you receive an email requesting payment before acceptance or for any other service, this may be a phishing scheme. Learn how to identify phishing emails and protect your accounts at https://explore.plos.org/phishing. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Agnese Sbrollini Academic Editor PLOS One |
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