Three-Dimensional Anatomical Analysis of Muscle–Skeletal Districts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Many thanks for submitting this interesting work. Although the topic is very interesting I am really confused about the structure and how authors present the contents.

In general, the content of each section is mixed, as authors include information of the results in the methodology and from the introduction in methodology, results and discussion.

I include comments about each part of the paper:

(Introduction) They explain a resume of the methodology in the introduction, but no in the objective paragraph.

(Figures) The vast majority of figures are not located in the appropriate section. In some figure captions it is explained what happens in each figure (a, b, c, d) before the identifier (a) (Example: Figure 10) and in others after (Example: Figure 7). In many of the figures, the units of the axes are not specified (Example: Figure 11). Mistakes (minor revisions): Figure 1 à ICP is not defined before the figure.

(2.1) There are no references for explaining the rheumatological symptoms and changes. Neither for spine affectation.

(2.1) Considering that "3D morphological analysis provides results that are comparable to 2D image analysis", but not superior, why are 3D models used if their creation requires a greater use of computational and time resources?

(2.2) The value of Hounsfield scale, the air is -1000 HU (negative and with the units). You should not give examples without the units and explain the units afterwards.

(2.2) Figure 2 is not referenced, but it is located in the 2.2. Section. Why the 3D model is morphologically identical for both vertebrae and wrist?

(3) First paragraph seems to be part of the discussion.

(3) The textural features studied must be named somewhere in the methodology section

(3.1) “Each vertex is associated with the value of its distance from the vertebral body centroid” why are you talking about vertebral body centroid for studying wrist bones? It is not clear. The whole section mixes wrist and vertebrae figures making it more confuse.

(3.1.1) What software is used for manual segmentation?

(3.1.2) Information ranging from ‘The inner tissue…’ to ‘thus resulting in a change of grey levels’ should be placed in the introduction, not in the methodology.

(3.1.2) You should briefly explain the methodology of [1] if you follow it to develop your models.

(3.1.3) “The distance distribution between the wrist’s bone at baseline and follow-up associates each bone vertex at follow-up time with the value of the corresponding bone at baseline.” It is not clear what this sentence means.

(3.2) Line 319: parts.is (minor revision)

(4.1) ‘For each of those subjects, 2 exams are present: one at baseline time (t1) and one at follow-up time (t2).’ should be indicated in the methodology section to clarify.

(4.2) BMD is not defined and it appears in Figure 9

(4.2) Figure 15 is not divided in (a, b, c) (minor revision)

Author Response

Please see the attachment

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The result of this study is valuable for researchers in this field. However, the manuscript is considered too long and verbose. Major revision may improve the quality of the manuscript. My comments are as follows.

1.       Many works were included in the manuscript, makes it difficult to read and understand. Could you add a flow chart showing the flow and relationship among studies, methods, results, etc.

2.       What is the originality of this study? I cannot understand the novelty of this study compared to the related works done in the past (Reference 1).

3.       Conclusions are too long. Brief conclusion is recommended.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for improve your paper according our suggestions

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is easy to understand now.