TITUS: Visualization of Neutrino Events in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear editor,
I read the article with interest. In my opinion the topic is relevant for the neutrino physics community. The description of this tool deserves to be published. Being a particle physicist and not an expert of this kind of software, my comments are more focused on the writing of the article.
I found the first two sections very general, I would like to ask the authors to make an additional effort in presenting, in a more robust way, the field and the problem of neutrino data visualization in particular.
Here are my minor comments:
I would like to ask the author to double check whether the references are the correct (and the most updated) ones. The doi is also reported: this is not very typical and it can be redundant if the reference to journal, issue and page is correctly reported. The DOI could be better used to create the hyperlink in the bibliography (for example in latex: \href{https://doi…)
L 17: “These detectors provide digital images of the neutrino interactions with matter,”
Particle detectors provide physical data (like charge on a wire or number of photons detected) and not digital images. Digital images are reconstructed from the data.
L26: “they deposit themselves on the last plane (blue).”
This sentence sounds a bit weird to me. I would better write that the field lines end on the last plane or that the last plane collects the drifting electrons.
L 47: “Additionally, techniques develop for TITUS”.
Developed.
L 49-51: “The philosophy behind TITUS is to develop a software package that allows users to easily customize the displayed objects and quickly add new ones that may be needed by particular physics analyses or experiments.”
I cannot fully understand this sentence. "Customize"... how? Which objects? I would also remove “or experiment” at the end of the sentence.
L 56: ” LArTPC technology has been in production experiments for fundamental physics for nearly two decades”
“in production experiments”...? I cannot understand what the authors are referring to. Maybe there is something missing in this sentence.
L57: ” We take inspiration from the visualization tools of larsoft [9] and ICARUS [10]”
LArsoft is a visualization tools but ICARUS is an experiment. Should Qscan be mentioned instead of ICARUS? In this case the reference should be probably changed.
L69 “3. Challenges”
This section seems a bit too short, it can be considered a cluster between Sec. 2 and Sec. 4. The concept introduced at the end of this sectionand/beginning of the following is split in two by the title of Sec.4. I would re-organize the structure.
L71: “to accurately and efficiently visualize a LArTPC image set,”
I am not a native speaker, however I prefer the word display. I think “display” can replace “visualize” in several sentences of this manuscript. I would write “visualize the data“ or “display an image” and not “visualize an image”. It is just a suggestion, I leave it to the authors.
L 79: “art framework”.
Should art be in italic? I cannot clearly see whether there a different font is used.
L 80: “Access of the data is performed using gallery, a lightweight access tool for art data products.”
There should be a reference. “Gallery” in italic?
L 165: “The MicroBooNE collaboration has been using TITUS for the first, online, application. TITUS is used to monitor the MicroBooNE detector 24/7, and it shows the latest data recorded. This is used by operators in the experiment’s control room to make sure that the raw data has an acceptable”
I think these these sentences are a bit redundant and can be merged. it would be much more elegant not to abuse of this word “use” (used,using..) in this subsection.
L 174 “Here, TITUS is used when the data are being analyzed and the data being analyzed has already been processed/reconstructed”.
this sentence seems to me twisted.
“Conclusions” section
I think this is just a short summary section. More robust conclusions should be reported, adding one or two sentences evidencing the progress TITUS has allowed in this field.
Best regards.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Ref.: TITUS: Visualization of Neutrino Events in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers by C. Adams and M. Del Tutto
The manuscript presents the results on TITUS, a software for visualization of data coming from LAr TPC, currently used by several collaborations. The presented results are of scientific relevance, the presentation of data is clear, English is satisfactory. The paper can therefore be accepted for publishing in MDPI Instruments in the present form, after fixing the following typos on Page 1：
Fix typos:
filed --> filled
5 Hz --> 5 GHz
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors discuss TITUS, an event display software they developed to read neutrino interaction data from LArTPC detectors and allow the physicists to visualize and interact with the events, such as to perform physics analyses. The software uses the PyQtGraph package to render images with OpenGL, making it efficient. The front-end of the software is Python based, making it easy for customization for different experiments. As an instrumentation paper, the article is well written and easy to understand. The ‘TITUS’ software is clearly useful for many neutrino experiments using LArTPC. I recommend publishing the paper after the authors fix a couple of typos:
Line 23: 'filed' should be 'filled'
Line 39: 'projects' should be 'projections'
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The argument is sector-based, however, it can be of interest for the experiments working on neutrino beams. Of course, it fits very well with the purposes of the Instruments review.
The paper can be accepted in the present form, apart from few english corrections.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
