Kinematic Analysis of Daily Activity of Touching Lateral Shoulder for Normal Subjects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

the document has an approach in an unexplored field. 
The methodology is adequate but not to all types of patients and more specifically to those with nervous system lesions.
most of the injured or hemiplegic patients have a pattern of increased spasticity, which forces the hand to be closed with the fingers in flexion and the forearm in rotation.
I would like to know how you plan to solve the measurement system with these patients. have you measured any participant in this situation?

Have you taken into account the avoidance of compensatory mechanisms when measuring, such as shoulder elevation or scapula movement?
Previous studies recommend fixing the patient with straps. these movements can alter your results if they occur. i recommend including them as limits of the study.

when taking arm measurements with a flexible tape, they do not specify the bibliography or the anthropometric method, this should be added.

 

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for their constructive comments and recommendations.  Please see the attachment for our response.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The work of Che-Nan and Rambley aims to  study an upper-limb movement that involves the shoulder, which from a biomechanics point of view, it is a complex joint of the human being. Authors analyzed the range of motion with attention also to angle velocity. Despite the experimental procedure can be centered for the study, some major and minor concerns should be addressed to make the study available for publication. 

Major Concerns 

- Results section needs a large review. Many methodological aspects regarding the computation of the kinematic quantities should be reported in the methods section and not in the results. Please consider to report in the Result Section a concise view of the whole analysis performed. 

- Authors should report clearly in the methods section for each joint analyzed which is(are) the angle(s) analyzed. Moreover, each joint should present three angles? Why authors excluded a 3D kinematic description of the task? Please consider to be more precise in the terminology and analysis.

-Reorganize the discussion avoiding repetitions. 

Minor Concerns 

- Authors attention was focused only on the kinematic of upper limb movements for clinical assessments. However it is important to mention in the introduction other kinds of signals commonly taken into account such as EMG signals, possibly enlarging also the perspective on the applications. For this regard, it is suggested to mention these recent works in the introduction: 

1) "Detection of movement onset using EMG signals for upper-limb exoskeletons in reaching tasks", 2019.
2) "Shoulder Motion Intention Detection Through Myoelectric Pattern Recognition" 2021.
3) "The effectiveness of EMG-driven neuromusculoskeletal model calibration is task dependent" 2021.

-In the methods study authors mentioned a pilot study without cite it, please report the study. 

-The quality of the figures is poor, please consider to increase the definition. 

Author Response

We thank the reviewers for their constructive comments and recommendations.

Please  see the attachment for our response.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This study provides a study regarding the kinematic analysis of the activity of touching lateral shoulder for normal subjects. Twenty subjects aged from 24 to 56 were involved in this study. The finding shows that the conducting speeding,  joint angles have high relevant with the age of subjects. Please find the following comments to improve the quality of the study. 

1) How do you apply your experimental finding in clinical applications should be highlighted to show your motivation of your study. 

2) It seems very obvious that elder subjects complete the motions slower than younger subjects, so what is the value of your experiment?

3) As we all understand, the completing speed of touching lateral shoulder can be subjectively controlled. Thus, how to you guarantee your experiment is scientific？

Author Response

We thanks the reviewers for their constructive comments and recommendations.

Please see the attachment for our response.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed almost all my concerns, however in figure 4 rather than "angle" the authors should specify which angle they are considering, e.g. shoulder flexion (if they are considering flexion), and so on for each joint involved. So please, use an adequate terminology. 

Moreover in the text I noticed some grammar errors such as "This studies has taken into account...". Authors should adopt an appropriate English.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the comment and recommendations.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx