Improved Accuracy for Measurement of Filament Diameter Based on Image-Based Fitting Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I stay with my decision. There are misleading statements in the study and no significant novelty for a publication.

Misleading statements: The authors use theory and equations for analysis which are derived for a two-dimensional object, Eq. 1-3 but claim to reconstruct three-dimensional object. In their reply the authors write that indeed the image recorded by the camera is 2D, which is misinterpretation of my point. My point is that and the theory are the equations used by the authors are for a flat 2D rectangular object.

The newly added description as "surface fitting" is further misleading. The authors do not reconstruct any surfaces. All what the authors retrieve is a width of a 2D rectangular slit (filament).

No significant novelty: a single diffraction pattern is sufficient to estimate the diameter of a filament. The diameter can be easily evaluated from the position of the minima or maxima in the diffraction pattern. The other "advances" made by the authors such as low-pass filtering, gamma correction, etc are completely unnecessary (because they will only make a minimal difference to the results) but can be made (and are made only when necessary) for any optical experiment.

I cannot recommend this paper for publication.

Author Response

We appreciate your efforts and constructive comments, which are very helpful in improving the manuscript.

We have revised the manuscript carefully and thoroughly according to the referee’s comments. Firstly, in order to avoid misunderstandings and to highlight innovative points, we have revised the title of the article to "Improved accuracy of measuring filament diameter based on image-based fitting method". Secondly, in order to make the precision of the method more convincing, we have supplemented the theoretical analysis in the revised article. Moreover, we have added remarks and discussions in response to the experimental results. Finally, some figures and analyses are added, and some corrections are made in the new version.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors basically corrected the text of the article according to my comments.

I have a small remark about Fig.3. A significant number of text signatures in Figure 3 are unreadable at 100% scale.The authors need to either enlarge them or admit that they don't need this drawing.

 

Author Response

Your comments are a great help to us. We have made a major revision to the article. The response has been placed in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors report about a technique to measure filament diameters by using laser diffraction (LD). The technique is a standard used also in undergrad labs, but the novelty in the paper is more about the data processing and fitting.

Results of the presented research show an increase of accuracy with respect to both traditional 1-D fitting and more advanced fitting techniques such as PSO. Compared to the latter, the proposed analysis of the data (which is specific to this kind of measurement) requires less computational effort and is faster.

I have just one minor modification to suggest. Since one key point of the paper is the accuracy improvement, it would be good to add to the paper some details about the evaluation of the standard deviation of the measurements:

a) Does it come from a distribution of outcomes on the same filament, for each filement? If this is the case, can the authors add an histogram for the different techniques related to one same filament to show that the proposed technique has an advantage over the other two considered in the paper?

b) Does it come from the fitting residual errors? If this is the case can the authors state this explicitly and show details at least in one measurement?

Minor editing is then needed in the present form to avoid grammar inconsitencies and spelling mistakes.

I recommend the paper for pubblication, provided that the two minor revisions indicated before are addressed.

 

Author Response

Dear referee

Thank you for your comments, which are very helpful. We have made significant changes to the article. The response has been placed in the attachment.

Sincerely,

All the authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript proposed a surface fitting method to measure diffraction images. The work is interesting, and some revisions should be considered：

1. In the second paragraph of Introduction, the authors simply summarized the existing research. A concise and clear summary for the literature review is required.

2. In the Results section, the discussion of the experimental results is weak. From the current manuscript, it is very difficult to find out the scientific value of the developed methods. The authors should strengthen this part.

3. The academic writing of the current manuscript requires significant improvement.

Author Response

We appreciate your efforts and constructive comments, which are very helpful in improving the manuscript.

We have revised the manuscript carefully and thoroughly according to the referee’s comments. Firstly, in order to avoid misunderstandings and to highlight innovative points, we have revised the title of the article to "Improved accuracy of measuring filament diameter based on image-based fitting method". Secondly, in order to make the precision of the method more convincing, we have supplemented the theoretical analysis in the revised article. Moreover, we have added remarks and discussions in response to the experimental results. Finally, some figures and analyses are added, and some corrections are made in the new version. The response has been placed in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have properly addressed the reviewer's comments. The manuscript can be accepted for publication now.