-->PONE-D-25-29965-->-->TIG Welding Detection Using Resnet And Random Forest-->-->PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Pham,

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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José Manuel Galán, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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3. We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed:

Vision based defects detection for Keyhole TIG welding using deep learning with visual explanation - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2020.05.033

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled “TIG Welding Detection Using ResNet and Random Forest” to PLOS ONE. Your work has been evaluated by two reviewers, who acknowledge the relevance of the study but have raised substantial concerns regarding methodological clarity, completeness of experimental details, literature review, and the presentation of results.

In light of these comments, the decision is Major Revision. Please carefully address all issues raised by the reviewers in your revised version. A detailed response letter indicating how each point has been handled is required with your resubmission.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Sincerely

José Manuel Galán

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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?

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Reviewer #1: Partly

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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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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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: In a quality control process carried out on welded specimens, the conditions and parameters used in the welding process must be clearly specified. This is not the case in the present article, where much information is missing in this respect.

Please consider the following recommendations:

-Are we talking about pulsed or non-pulsed TIG? From what is mentioned in table 1 and in the previous paragraph, it seems that it is pulsed TIG, but if so it should be explicitly stated.

-In Table 1, the welding current is mentioned, which is understood to be the pulse current, but what is the value of the base current?

-In Table 1, pulse time is the pulse current duration? If so, the values shown are excessively high.

-What is the value of the pulse frequency?

-What is the value of the welding speed?

-What is the value of the shielding gas flow rate?

-Is filler material used? If so, please indicate which one.

-Tungsten electrode is pure or alloyed?

-What is the value of the electrode diameter?

-Is direct current in straight polarity or alternating current used in the welding process?

-Please, indicate de chemical composition of the base metal.

-In the text, it is mentioned: “four distinct welding states were identified: lack of fusion, overheating, uneven weld, and normal weld”, please provide some reference to support this classification.

Reviewer #2: 1. The title needs to be modified, I suggest including the term “welding defect detection/classification” instead of “welding detection” to make it more accurate and aligned with the content of the manuscript.

2. The abstract needs to be rewritten and modified for further clarification. It should state the AI methods/algorithms that were used and also the evaluation techniques applied to validate the results.

Also, the final sentence is unclear, the author mentions “this method performs better …”, it is not clear which specific method is being referred to. Please revise to ensure clarity.

3. The references used in the paper are quite outdated. It is recommended to include more recent studies 2024-2025, especially in the related work section to strengthen the contribution and relevance of the paper. Here are suggested publications in the same study field:

- Khan, I. U., Aslam, N., Aboulnour, M., Bashamakh, A., Alghool, F., Alsuwayan, N., Alturaif, R., Gull, H., Iqbal, S. Z., & Hussain, T. (2024). Deep learning-based surface defect detection in steel products using convolutional neural networks. Mathematical Modelling of Engineering Problems, 11, 3006– 3014. https:// doi. org/ 10. 18280/ mmep. 111113

- Palma-Ramírez, D., Ross-Veitía, B. D., Font-Ariosa, P., Espinel-Hernández, A., Sanchez-Roca, A., Carvajal-Fals, H., Nuñez-Alvarez, J. R., & Hernández-Herrera, H. (2024). Deep convolutional neural network for weld defect classification in radiographic images. Heliyon, 10, 1–11. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1016/j. heliy on. 2024. e30590

- Zhang, Q., Zhang, K., Pan, K., & Huang, W. (2024). Image defect classification of surface mount technology welding based on the improved ResNet model. Journal of Engineering Research (Kuwait), 12, 154–162. https://d oi. org/ 10. 1016/j. jer. 2024. 02. 007

- Elhendawy, G.A., El-Taybany, Y. Machine Vision-Assisted Welding Defect Detection System with Convolutional Neural Networks. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-025-01281-y

4. In the introduction section:

- in the first paragraph, the sentence “defects may result in the welds” is too general. It would be more informative to mention specific examples of common weld defects (e.g., porosity, cracks, lack of fusion) and support them with appropriate references.

- The second paragraph, it is recommended to split it into two parts: one describing online monitoring methods and the other describing offline monitoring methods.

- There are several issues with the references and writing style. For example, reference no. 18 is incorrectly cited as 2019, while it is actually a 2021 source. The phrase “and his colleagues” should be replaced by the standard academic style “et al.”.

Furthermore, the literature review section should be written in the past tense, whereas the final part that states the research aim and contribution can be written in the present or present perfect tense. Please revise to ensure tense consistency throughout the manuscript.

5. The methodology section needs some references to support the entire information about ResNet and RF combination benefits. Please cite relevant works that demonstrate or justify this advantage.

6. related to the previous comment, the author compared their proposed combination model with other machine learning methods (e.g., RF, SVM) and CNN architectures (e.g., VGG, ResNet, GoogLeNet/Inception), Please add a short description for each method (in Methodology section) to be more understandable.

7. Is the medical endoscopic camera used sufficient to reliably capture different types of weld defects. Please justify the adequacy of this device for weld defect detection, and if it is possible, please provide supporting references where similar cameras or optical setups have been successfully used before.

8. The experimental parameters listed in Table 1 (welding current, pulse time, and corresponding defect types), it is not clear whether these values were selected based on a specific Design of Experiments (DoE) approach, prior studies, or trial-and-error. Please clarify how choosing these parameter ranges and provide references or justification for this selection.

9. The author states that the input images were normalized using mean values and standard deviations, Please clarify the source of these values.

10. Figure 6 >> add the axis title (weld class & no. of samples).

11. Please add the references you get the equations of the performance metrices.

12. The results section requires further clarification:

- Table 2 only shows the training accuracy. What about the testing and validation results for completeness.

- A heatmap is mentioned in the text, but no corresponding figures are included. Please add the relevant images to support the discussion.

- In the last paragraph of the results (related to Figure 11), the explanation is not clear enough. Provide a more detailed description and include the numerical results to make the findings easier to understand and compare.

- Also, the conclusion should include additional performance evaluation metrics (e.g., precision, recall, F1-score) with numerical values, instead of reporting only accuracy, to give a more comprehensive assessment of the proposed method.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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-->PONE-D-25-29965R1-->

TIG welding defect detection using Resnet and Random forest

PLOS One

-->

Dear Dr. Son Minh,

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 Jul 09 2026 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 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'.

-->

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

José Manuel Galán, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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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.

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:

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting the revised version of your manuscript, “TIG welding defect detection using Resnet and Random forest”, to PLOS ONE.

The reviewers acknowledge that the manuscript has improved and that most previous concerns have been addressed. However, a final minor revision is required before the manuscript can be considered for acceptance.

Please ensure that all relevant technical details provided in your response letter are also clearly included in the manuscript, particularly the welding parameters, electrode specifications, polarity, base metal composition, and reference to the applicable weld classification standard.

Please also revise the abstract and conclusion to clarify the rationale for using the selected ResNet/CNN and Random Forest approach, briefly discuss why alternative classifiers were not used or were less suitable, and add a short comment on computational complexity.

Finally, please conduct a careful proofreading to correct minor typographical, grammatical, spacing, and consistency issues.

No new experiments appear to be required. Please submit a revised manuscript and a concise response letter indicating where the changes have been made.

Sincerely,

José M. Galán

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: 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: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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: In their response to the reviewers, the authors have adequately addressed the issues raised by this reviewer; however, they have not included most of this information, even though the authors explicitly state that they do include this data, in the revised manuscript (i.e. the base current, value of the pulse frequency, the value of the welding speed, the value of the shielding gas flow rate, the type and diameter Tungsten electrode, the fact that the welding process used Direct Current Straight Polarity (DCSP), the chemical composition of the base metal, the reference to ISO 5817, etc.). I think this information is useful and should be included in the revised manuscript.

Reviewer #3: The abstract needs to be modified. why CNN architecture are selected in this research why not SVM with hyperparameter tuning methods? Why RF only why not NBC? The conclusion may be modified. The cocmputational complexity may be included.

Reviewer #4: Reviewer # 1 Comment (11 in total):

All responses have been fully received, and relevant information has been added to the main text, including pulse parameters, base current, welding speed, protective gas flow rate, tungsten electrode type/diameter, polarity, base metal composition, and reference to weld classification standards.

Reviewer # 2 comments (12 in total):

The title, abstract, introduction, references, model description, camera resolution explanation, parameter selection basis, normalization source, Figure 6 axis title, formula citation, result clarification, etc. have all been modified as required.

Review opinion: Suggest a global inspection

There are some similar minor typographical errors throughout the text (such as extra spaces, inconsistent singular and plural forms, etc.). It is recommended that the author use the spelling and grammar checking functions of word processing software to quickly review and further improve the language quality.

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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 #3: Yes:  Harikumar Rajaguru

Reviewer #4: No

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TIG welding defect detection using Resnet and Random forest

PONE-D-25-29965R2

Dear Dr. Son Minh,

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,

José Manuel Galán, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: