Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) Captures Early Micro-Vascular Remodeling in Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer During Superficial Radiotherapy: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Item 2.2 states that "healthy vasculature appears more relaxed and uniformly distributed," while pathology is characterized by a "dense and chaotic vascular pattern." However, in Figure 3, we see that SizeZoneNonUniformity and Complexity increase after treatment not only compared to the pathology before and immediately after treatment, but also compared to the normal value. How do these terms relate to each other?
2. Was the effect of preprocessing steps with different parameters (for 3D median filtering and contrast enhancement) on feature extraction results (e.g., vascular morphology) investigated?
3. Figure 2 shows color maps of OCT angiographic volumes of four typical lesions, represented at three time points. How do the clinical data about the lesions in patients compare with the map data?
4. It would be advisable to additionally use another optical method for assessing the state of the vascular system, such as determining the degree of oxygenation and blood flow in the skin microcirculatory bed.
5. Unfortunately, the stated Supplementary Materials option was not available, which significantly reduces the quality of the work.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript presents a solid work for an interesting application of OCT. 

The manuscript could be improved in the following aspects:

1. Some typos/missing words to correct. For example, line 131, the "mm" should be "mm^3"; line 135, "missing "to" after "prior", 
2. Line 88 mentioned 8 patients, but line 215 mentioned 9 patients that turned to be 8 patients. How the 9 patients become a total of 8 patients should be better described.
3. Figure 3 on page 8 should be Figure 4. Figure 3 on page 9 should be Figure 5. Figure 3 on page 16 should be Figure 6. 
4. Figure 3 on page 7, better to differentiate the markers by style/shape, than by color.
5. Figure 4 on page 8 needs to be presented with 1:1 aspect ratio. 
6. Figure 2 needs some additional work. This figure is a little bit confusing. I would recommend that you include each column of images in one framed and shaded block to clarify that there were 4 images presented for each of "health/pre/post/3Month). Or the images could be rearranged to have the different pathologies placed vertically, and the repeated images aligned horizontally. 
7. One issue common to Figure 2, Figure 5 on page 9, and Figure 6 on page 16, is that, the pathology of 3M is closer to that of healthy, so it may be viable to arrange the cases at the order of "pre", "post", "3M", and "healthy", to highlight that the "3M" cases are closer to the "healthy" ones.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The added materials have significantly improved the article. The work may be published in this issue. It will be of interest to a wide range of specialists.