Development and Preliminary Trajectory Verification of the Electromotor-Driven Parallel External Fixator for Deformity Correction
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have presented an electromotor-driven parallel external fixator for deformity correction. The work is interesting and the overall scientific soundness is adequate. However, there are some key unanswered questions which need to be addressed:
1) The electromotors adds additional weights and required electrical connections. Currently, the authors are using an external control box and software (on a laptop). However, hooking a patient to the entire system with impeding any practical use. How do the authors plan to overcome the issue?
2) What is the added weight to the system because of the motors and control unit? Can it still be used in clinically valid scenarios?
3) How is the patient isolated electrically from the system? Please provide details of electrical safety testing as per the IEC standards or equivalents.
4) The system currently has no feedback control. How do the authors guarantee the accuracy of the deformity correction in absence of such a control mechanism?
5) The authors should improve the text to better reflect the novelty of the work and the innovations in the work.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers,
Thank you very much for your letter and the comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Development and preliminary trajectory verification of the electromotor-driven parallel external fixator for deformity correction” (Manuscript ID: applsci-1012751). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.
We have studied comments carefully and made an extensive modification to the original manuscript. All of the revisions were marked in red. The main corrections and changes, as an item-by-item response to reviewers’ comments, are as following (the answers are marked in blue):
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
In this paper, the authors have described the development and preliminary trajectory verification of an electromotor-driven parallel external fixator for deformity correction. This is an interesting concept and technical development which allows for the automatic adjustment and gradual correction of the deformity, reducing the reliance on the patient to administer the adjustments.
It is concisely written with a clear hypothesis and well described results.
Could the authors add more detail to Fig. 3 of the workings of the external fixator and label what the individual parts are and their function.
Line 267. Could the authors expand on how they arrived at a 20 days correction time.
What are the level of deformities this electromotor-driven parallel external fixator can repair? Are there any musculoskeletal restrictions for the workings of this fixator?
Fig 9. The adjusting stages look very promising. How does this compare to clinical methods now? It would be good to have the modelled techniques that are employed in the clinic now as a comparison.
What are the constraints on the soft tissue in the straightening of the bone? Has this been factored in for the electromotor driven fixator?
Line 395. The authors stated. “The fixator system can provide a larger force/moment with Fmax = 2.52 KN to balance the corrective resistance from muscles and soft tissues during the deformity correction.” Are the forces and adjustments in the clinic going to be painful for the patient? How will the authors address these clinical issues with their automated external fixator?
Line 418 The authors state. “Experimental results show that the electromotor-driven parallel external fixator system can correct any three-dimensional deformity in a single plane or multiple planes and achieve a preset correction trajectory with high accuracy.” Is this level of correction going to be depending on the adaptation of the muscle, tendons and ligaments?
Line 42- 43 “The complicated manual adjustment makes patients tend to forget easily during adjustment. This statement is not clear.
Line 66-67. “A numerical searching method is provided to simulate the ROM on the basis of the inverse position solution to assist clinicians in more intuitively assess the fixator’s correction capability.” This sentence needs clarification.
Line 375 “…leading to the patient tends to forget to implement the adjustment plan.” Sentence need rephrasing.
Line 378 “…external fixator for fracture reduction, using electromotor driven replaces the action of manually moving the fixator” Sentence needs rephrasing
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your letter and the comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Development and preliminary trajectory verification of the electromotor-driven parallel external fixator for deformity correction” (Manuscript ID: applsci-1012751). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.
We have studied comments carefully and made an extensive modification to the original manuscript. All of the revisions were marked in red. The main corrections and changes, as an item-by-item response to reviewers’ comments, are as following (the answers are marked in blue):
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
May be accepted.
