A Non-Local Low-Rank Algorithm for Sub-Bottom Profile Sonar Image Denoising

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The document presents an interesting method for sub-bottom image profile applications and The presented results are quite promising. Although, I suggest some modifications prior to paper acceptance:

- The proposed method should be better addressed in the introduction to highlight the main contributions.

- The line like pattern is adopted for the guidance image, but i t is not clear whether it may be applied for most experimental cases nor how The proposed method is supposed to work when this is not the case.

- The mathematical formulae is poorly formatted and requires improvement.

- A complete revision of the text is required to improve the final document quality.

- The equations used to compute both PSNR and SSIM should be presented.

- Some estimation of the expected statistical fluctuations must be included in The results presented in Tables 1 and 2.

- The synthetic case considered in figure 14 ( only horizontal strait h lines) does not seam to represent well the experimental cases from previous figures. How such simulated results may be extended to the experimental case is not clear.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, a novel SBP image noise denoising method is developed for obtaining an underlying clean image based on a non-local low-rank framework. The paper is interesting but has some serious drawbacks.

1. The authors should compare the proposed method and related methods in terms of time and hardware resources estimation.
2. The authors should present the limitations of the proposed method.
3. The generation of synthetic BSP image with noise should be better commented.
4. The paper needs part Discussion. Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. Future research directions may also be highlighted. 
5. The paper should be proofread.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions.

In this manuscript, a SBP image noise denoising method is presented, developed for acquiring clean SBP images. Method is based on non-local low rank framework. Authors tested this method in real survey as well as verified and compared with other methods. The method is well described and presented. The article brings something new to this area of knowledge. The references are correct, although they are incorrectly formatted in some places. References are not excessive. Should be completed with several other publications. Standard guidelines for preparing the manuscript in Remote Sensing are not followed. I miss the Discussion section. This is a quite novel topic that will be of interest to the readers, but editing errors must be removed or corrected (see the attachment).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed all of my concerns. I think the paper can be accepted.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Most of the comments and suggestions have been incorporated and corrected. After removing minor errors, I recommend publishing the article.

Comments:

1. Table 1,3,4,5. Last column: Our method. Change to Authors’ method
2. Line 139-140. Revise to proper subscript. Change λ1, to λ₁. Use subscript button.
3. Line 142: change σ0 to σ₀
4. Line 144: use subscript button for R_B , please (RB it not the same as R_B).
5. Lines 149-152: Correct all subscripts in variables.
6. Figure 7: the general caption of Figure 7 is missing.
7. Figure 8: comment as above in (6).

Author Response

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