Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Subject is of interest for audience in the field of osteoporosis. Did the authors try to validate their method with results of pQCT or any bone markers of osteoporosis. I think it should be useful since we are aware of DXA limitations.

Additionally, recently published literature should be added to reference list and discussed.

1. What is the main question addressed by the research? Cheaper options to punctually assess BMD without DXA.

2. Do you consider the topic original or relevant in the field? Does it address a specific gap in the field? Topic is original, but it is not clear whether it can fill the gap in the field.

3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material? It provided a new option to indirectly assess bone mass.

4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology? What further controls should be considered? Ideally, osteoporosis in the included patients should be assessed by using pQCT.

5. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented and do they address the main question posed? Yes

6. Are the references appropriate? References should be more recent and include new insights/utilization of pQCT, DXA and even FRAX.

Subject is of interest for audience in the field of osteoporosis. Did the authors try to validate their method with results of pQCT or any bone markers of osteoporosis. I think it should be useful since we are aware of DXA limitations.

Additionally, recently published literature should be added to reference list and discussed.

Author Response

29 September 2023

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

Thank you and the reviewers for a careful reading of the manuscript bioengineering-2612741, and for the comments and suggestions who helped us increase the clarity of the presentation.

All the points raised by the reviewers have been addressed. In the revised manuscript these changes are highlighted in yellow. The reviewer’s comments (Italic) and our detailed responses and explanations of the changes are given in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to congratulate the authors for an excellent work. I have some minor comments to improve the article. Please clarify specify the novelty of the work in the introduction. The work has good novelty but clarify this as bullet points in the introduction. Please as comparative analysis in the discussion and add limitation of the work at the end of discussion section. 

Author Response

29 September 2023

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

Thank you and the reviewers for a careful reading of the manuscript bioengineering-2612741, and for the comments and suggestions who helped us increase the clarity of the presentation.

All the points raised by the reviewers have been addressed. In the revised manuscript these changes are highlighted in yellow. The reviewer’s comments (Italic) and our detailed responses and explanations of the changes are given in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This article proposes a specialized automated intelligent system that supports the implementation of convolutional autoencoders to generate individual bone tissue grayscale values by reducing the influence of soft tissue. Therefore, in bone tissue visualization, the interference of soft tissue on bone density prediction is reduced. In short, this paper has certain practical significance.

1. The article has unclear context, unclear structure, and overall confusion.

2. The introduction of convolutional autoencoder is unclear, and there is no explanation why convolutional autoencoder is good.

3. The experimental results are presented in paragraph form, and the improvement after using autoencoders cannot be intuitively displayed. Additionally, some data is not reflected in the article.

4. The cited references are mostly outdated and do not refer to the latest achievements and literature in this field.

 

 

The English expression is average, with some grammar issues that require some changes.

Author Response

29 September 2023

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

Thank you and the reviewers for a careful reading of the manuscript bioengineering-2612741, and for the comments and suggestions who helped us increase the clarity of the presentation.

All the points raised by the reviewers have been addressed. In the revised manuscript these changes are highlighted in yellow. The reviewer’s comments (Italic) and our detailed responses and explanations of the changes are given in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your corrections and reply to my concerns regarding pQCT. Manuscript is now improved, however, only validation by utilizing comparison with pQCT could add significant additional value to your work.

Author Response

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the reviewer for considering my paper. Your constructive feedback and insights have played a pivotal role in shaping the quality and clarity of the content. Especially, the comment about validating with pQCT is very priceless, which will definitely be applied in next researches for extending the development of this method.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been sufficiently improved to ensure publication in bioengineering. 

Author Response

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the reviewer for accepting my paper. Your constructive feedback and insights have played a pivotal role in shaping the quality and clarity of the content. Thank you for your time, effort, and valuable contribution to this publication.