-->PONE-D-26-14112-->-->An RPP-YOLOv11 Model for Road Crack Detection-->-->PLOS One

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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: Yes

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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-->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

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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: This study addresses the challenge of accurate and efficient road crack detection in complex environments (e.g., low light, shadows, haze) and across varying scales. Building upon the YOLOv11 architecture, the authors aim to enhance feature extraction for fine cracks, global perception of large-scale cracks, and robustness under diverse lighting conditions. The proposed approach is well-motivated by identified limitations in existing methods, and the integration of RGBT fusion, PSConv, and multi-scale detection is coherent. The experimental design is systematic, including ablation studies, comparisons with baselines and state-of-the-art models, and extension experiments. Results demonstrate improvements over YOLOv11 and other benchmarks across key metrics (precision, recall, mAP@0.5, mAP@0.5:0.95), supporting the authors' claims. However, revisions are required to address presentation issues and clarify specific points before acceptance.

*Condense the overview of YOLOv1-v8 in Section 2.1. Focus more detail on YOLOv11 and its specific improvements relevant to this work (e.g., architecture optimizations), and explicitly compare/contrast the proposed RPP-YOLOv11 with closely related models like YOLOv11-DCFNet and YOLOv11-RGBT, highlighting the novelty and differences of the current approach.

*Provide high-resolution versions of ALL figures. Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 are essential for understanding the model and must be legible. Use vector graphics (PDF, SVG) or high-resolution raster images (minimum 300 DPI). Ensure all text labels, arrows, and diagram elements are crisp and clear both on screen and in print.

*In Section 3.1 (RGBT Fusion), briefly explain the function of the "Silence" and "SilenceChannel" modules. What specific operation do they perform on the 4-channel input to make it compatible with the subsequent backbone network designed for 3 channels? A sentence or two clarifying their role would significantly improve readability.

Reviewer #2: This article focuses on road crack detection and proposes RPP-YOLOv11 based on YOLOv11. The core changes include: early fusion of RGB and thermal infrared information to form 4-channel inputs, introduction of PSConv to replace some standard convolutions, and addition of P6 detection layer to construct a P3-P6 four scale detection framework. The author reported significant improvement in YOLOv11 compared to baseline on RDD2022, and provided ablation experiments, comparisons with YOLOv5/8/10/11, and cross dataset testing on UAV-PDD2023. The overall goal is clear, the method chain is complete, and the paper attempts to simultaneously address issues such as adaptability to complex environments, fine-grained crack characterization, and insufficient receptive field for large-scale cracks.

Strength:

The topic of the article has practical significance. Road crack detection itself is a problem with clear engineering requirements. The author organizes the problem around three pain points: complex lighting, small and slender targets, and large-scale crack missed detection. The problem definition is reasonable. The method design also has a certain degree of intuitiveness: RGBT early fusion, PSConv, and P6 layers correspond to environmental robustness, local detail modeling, and large-scale target coverage, respectively, with relatively clear module responsibilities. The experimental part at least includes single module ablation, comprehensive ablation, comparison of mainstream YOLO series, and cross dataset testing, indicating that the author consciously verifies the effectiveness of the scheme from multiple perspectives. Based on the numbers provided in the manuscript, the complete model is relatively better than YOLOv11 mAP@0.5 The mAP@0.5 0.95, with significant improvements in precision and recall, while the parameter count remains relatively small, which is attractive for engineering deployment.

However, there are some issues that need to be addressed as follows.

1. Format: The clarity of all images is severely lacking, and the table design is not standardized and aesthetically pleasing.

2. The ablation experiment is not yet complete. The author only conducted single module and full module combinations, but did not analyze pairwise combinations between modules, nor did they report statistical stability, such as running mean/variance multiple times or different random seed results.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Guohua Lv

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An RPP-YOLOv11 Model for Road Crack Detection

PONE-D-26-14112R1

Dear Dr. Shi,

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,

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The reviewers have no more questions.

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 #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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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 Response)

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: (No Response)

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: Yes:  Guohua Lv

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