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Dear Authors,
We are happy with your revised version and would like to recommend it for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Claudio Ardagna, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
- Considered acceptable.
- Considered acceptable.
- Considered acceptable.
- With the help of the Reviewers, this revised and re-submitted manuscript has been considerably improved, and would seem ready to proceed.
Dear Authors,
Please revise your article in the light of reviewer comments and resubmit it for evaluation.
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This submitted draft would seem interesting, is considered easily intelligible, and should be worth following after a very thorough revision. With the latter, please note/stick to the comments given below.
General remark
- Please double check your draft and revise carefully, and follow the Guidelines for Authors.
Abstract
- Subheadings would seem missing. See Authors' Guidelines at https://peerj.com/about/author-instructions/cs. Subheadings should be Background, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions, and must be bold, followed by a period, and then by normal text (not bold).
- Did you note that you have doubled information here (see sentence #2 und #3)? Compare "It is a chronic disease characterized by the demineralization and destruction of the tooth’s hard tissues, primarily caused by the interaction between bacteria and dietary sugars." and "It is a chronic disease characterized by the demineralization and destruction of the tooth’s hard tissues, primarily caused by the interaction between bacteria and dietary sugars." Please revise.
- Please add more information. Remember that your Abstract will help future readers to switch to your full text. Maximum word count with this section is 500 (3,000 characters). Revise carefully.
- Your conclusions must be appropriately stated, have to be connected to the original question investigated, and should be exclusively limited to those supported by the results.
- This section clearly is in need of a thorough revision (including clear and indisputable rewriting of aims and objectives).
Intro
- No "INTRODUCTION" headline. Instead, stick to the Guidelines for Authors, and provide Background [methodology / experimental sections appropriate to your work], Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments, and References as main headlines.
- "Dental caries are amongst the most common oral health issues, arising from residual food particles adhering to the teeth and leading to calcification." This would seem wrong. With your revision, please search for some help from a dentist experienced with science. First, it is not the food remnants, but the bacterial biofilm being responsible for caries onset. Second, this does not lead to "calcification"; instead, please use the term "demineralization".
- Referencing would not seem adapted to Journal style. Again, please stick to the Guidelines for Authors. "(...) having dental caries of permanent nature James et al. (2018)." must read "(...) having dental caries of permanent nature (James et al., 2018)." Revise carefully, but thoroughly.
- Remember that every statement you are providing would call for a sound reference.
- Revise for typos. "Tooth decay (dental caries), is a condition (...)." must read "Tooth decay (dental caries) is a condition (...)."
- "If left untreated, this can lead to the formation of small gaps between the teeth, resulting in pain, infection, and potential tooth loss (...)." Again, this would not seem satisfying. Obviously, the Author is not a dental expert. Again, searching some professional help would be strongly advocated.
- "Early-stage caries can still be missed even after the use of the latest imaging techniques." First, what do mean when referring to "early-stage caries"? Second, please differentiate between smooth surfaces, occlusal surface, and proximal surfaces.
- "Dental caries, despite being preventable and treatable, are frequently associated with tooth loss and pain." This would refer to very late stages only. Today, we search for demineralizations at the earliest stage. Please revise.
- Same with "Different equipment is used to identify dental cavities." Remember that "cavities" are very late stages, and this will be seen by the naked eye (I would say that you do not need to study dentistry to assess "cavities"). To elucidate the background to some extent, you might wish to stick to a previous paper written by the present Reviewer (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16730403/). Remember that this paper refers to cavitations at proximal sites, and "cavitations" include even those defects not visible with the naked eye.
- What do you mean when referring to "offers advantages such as lower infection rates"?
- "(...), and quantitative light-induced fluorescence." would also call for a sound reference. See, for example, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16546854/.
- "Early dentinal diagnostic tools are employed for caries and this enabled dentists to diagnose the dentinal cavities much earlier than using the orthodox and conventional methods." What do you mean here? What are "early dentinal diagnostic tools"? What do mean when referring to "orthodox and conventional methods"?
- Again, please revise for typos. See "(...) using CAD systems. this study made (...)."
- "The rest of the sections of this paper are arranged as described as under." Meaning remains unclear.
- Same with "Section details the relevant literature (...)", "In Section , the dataset description, (...)", "The outcomes of the paper are presented in Section .", and "Finally, in Section , the study is concluded (...)". This reviewer has the feeling that the Authors did not review and revise his finally submitted draft.
- With your "RELATED WORK section", please see comments given above, and provide a sound manuscript structure according to Journal style.
- Again, many thoughts presented here would call for sound references.
- Again, do not double your information. See "Kang et al. Kang et al. (2023)".
- Same with "Thanh et al. Thanh et al. (2022)". Please note that eliminating such minor shortcomings will strongly facilitate reading.
- Same "Lian et al. Lian et al. (2021)". Please revise thoroughly throughout your text.
Meths
- Please revise for uniform Journal style. Compare " Table 1" and "table 2".
- Same with "diagram 1".
- What do you mean when referring to "oral cavities detection approach"? "Oral cavity" would mean "mouth", right? But this is not what you mean.
- Again, double check and revise for typos, see "Recall, Accuracy, (...)".
- Again, uniformity would facilitate reading. See "chi-2", "Chi-square", "Chi2", X², and so on. Please revise thoroughly for χ² (or chi-square).
- With ALL materials (including and methodologies (including [statistical] software), please use general names with your text, followed by (brand name; manufacturer, city, ST[ate - abbreviated, if US], country) in parentheses. Stick to semicolon and commas.
Results
- Again, double check for headings and subheadings. No capital letters.
- Please ensure that all Tables are self-explaining, Provide enough information with legends, so everyone can read your Tables without the need to switch back to your full text.
Disc
- A Discussion section clearly is missing.
- A typical radiograph showing a caries lesion must be provided.
- Please elucidate the need to improve caries detection/diagnosis. Please note that caries restricted to outer enamel is a major problem, since such lesions would call for a treatment decision consisting of either fluoridation or resin infiltration (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19639091/).
- Same with dentinal caries just having crossed the enamel-dentin border; such lesions would either call for conventional restorations, or for a much less minimally invasive treatment concept (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31990942/), and clarify that in those cases a high diagnostic accuracy would seem mandatory.
- Your thoughts currently presented with your Conclusions would better fit to the Discussion section, see
_ "Prevention and early detection are key in managing dental caries." Not considered a conclusion from your study.
_ "Maintaining good oral hygiene practices, including regular brushing with fluoride toothpaste, flossing, and using antimicrobial mouthwashes, helps remove plaque and reduce the risk of cavities." Not considered a conclusion from your study.
_ "Additionally, adopting a balanced diet low in sugary foods and beverages can minimize the exposure of teeth to acid-producing bacteria." Not considered a conclusion from your study.
_ "Regular dental check-ups and professional cleanings are essential for the early detection and management of dental caries." Not considered a conclusion from your study.
_ "Dentists can identify early signs of decay, provide necessary treatments such as fillings or dental sealants, and offer guidance on oral hygiene practices and dietary modifications." See comments given above. Remember that "sealant" would not be the right term with proximal caries. "Sealants" will be used with occlusal caries, but such lesions will not be detectable with radiographs.
The comments given above will should help to copy & paste your thoughts to the Discussion section.
Concl
- "This research work provides a complete framework for automatic tooth caries detection." With your Conclusions, do not provide a summary.
- "The first step of the proposed model is based on PCA feature extraction. In the second step, PCA-extracted significant features are fed to the ensemble voting classifier (XGB+RF+ETC)." Do not repeat your Methodology here.
- "The results obtained show the superiority of the proposed model among all state-of-the-art models by giving an accuracy of 97.36%." Do not repeat your results here.
- Same with "The proposed model is also tested with other feature extraction techniques like chi-square and 8 other machine learning models." This is not a conclusion.
- Same with "The future work of this research is to make the combination of machine and deep learning models as an ensemble to get more accurate results. The second future work direction is based on the usage of transfer learning models to augment data and better training." All these thoughts basically would seem right, but are not considered "Conclusions". Again, transfer those aspects to your Discussion section.
- With your Conclusions, please stick exclusively to your revised aims. Do not simply repeat your results here. Instead, provide a reasonable and generalizable extension of your outcome.
Refs
- Please thoroughly revise for Journal style.
Without doubt, this submitted draft would seem interesting. Unfortunately, no dental expert has been accompanied here, and several aspects simply would seem wrong, or, at least, perfectible. This submitted draft clearly would benefit from involving a dentist experienced with scientific writing, and, indeed, the Author should feel free to search for such a co-operation. Even the current reviewer would be happy to help. Due to the various Journal regulations concerning reviewing and editing, this should be clarified with the Editor. Please remember that the reviewing process does not expect the reviewer to ghost-author your manuscript.
The current version, however, is not considered ready to proceed.
- Please see comments given above.
- Please see comments given above.
- Please see comments given above.
The study was aimed to introduce an ML-based oral cavities detection approach utilizing classifiers for more accurate prediction of tooth caries. The present research work provides a complete framework for automatic tooth caries detection. The model proposed consisted of two steps, the first step is based on PCA feature extraction and the second step, PCA-extracted significant features are fed to the ensemble voting classifier (XGB+RF+ETC). The results show the proposed model’s superiority among all state-of-the-art models by giving an accuracy of 97.36%.
The authors have done an excellent job describing the experimental design and methodologies used in the present study. The proposed model was also tested with other feature extraction techniques like chi-square and eight other machine learning models.
The inclusion of relevant and well-designed diagrams enhances the understanding of the work flow. The diagrams effectively illustrate key concepts and mechanisms, providing a visual aid for readers to comprehend complex processes.
The article presents a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the topic, and with the suggested improvements, it will undoubtedly make a valuable contribution to the field. The findings have been discussed in detail with the available research in the area of research.
There are a few grammatical errors and typos that need correction. I recommend the authors conduct a final proofreading of the manuscript to ensure the language is polished and error-free. Here the collections and suggestions.
• The symbol for Chi square (χ2) can be used instead of Chi-2 all over the document where it is quoted.
• Line no:76-Capital ‘T’ in the sentence “this study made the following contributions”.
• Line no:100- author name Kang et al repeated twice.
• Line 101-mRMR and GINI-abbreviations not quoted.
• Line 106-author name Thanh et al repeated twice.
• Line no109-R-CNN: abbreviation not quoted.
• Line no 113 -author name Lian et al repeated twice.
• Line 121-author name Oztekin et al repeated twice.
• Line 125-author name Ghamdi et al repeated twice.
• Line 129-author name Jader et al repeated twice.
• Line 134-author name Muramatsu et al repeated twice.
• Line 137-author name Raith et al repeated twice.
• Line 140-author name Kuhnisch et al repeated twice.
• Line 149-SMOTE: abbreviation not quoted.
• Line -215: sentence correction- “This means the class that receives…….
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