Thought on Food: A Systematic Review of Current Approaches and Challenges for Food Intake Detection.

Journal: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
PMID:

Abstract

Nowadays, individuals have very stressful lifestyles, affecting their nutritional habits. In the early stages of life, teenagers begin to exhibit bad habits and inadequate nutrition. Likewise, other people with dementia, Alzheimer's disease, or other conditions may not take food or medicine regularly. Therefore, the ability to monitor could be beneficial for them and for the doctors that can analyze the patterns of eating habits and their correlation with overall health. Many sensors help accurately detect food intake episodes, including electrogastrography, cameras, microphones, and inertial sensors. Accurate detection may provide better control to enable healthy nutrition habits. This paper presents a systematic review of the use of technology for food intake detection, focusing on the different sensors and methodologies used. The search was performed with a Natural Language Processing (NLP) framework that helps screen irrelevant studies while following the PRISMA methodology. It automatically searched and filtered the research studies in different databases, including PubMed, Springer, ACM, IEEE Xplore, MDPI, and Elsevier. Then, the manual analysis selected 30 papers based on the results of the framework for further analysis, which support the interest in using sensors for food intake detection and nutrition assessment. The mainly used sensors are cameras, inertial, and acoustic sensors that handle the recognition of food intake episodes with artificial intelligence techniques. This research identifies the most used sensors and data processing methodologies to detect food intake.

Authors

  • Paulo Alexandre Neves
    School of Technology, Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, 6000-767 Castelo Branco, Portugal.
  • João Simões
    Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal.
  • Ricardo Costa
    Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal.
  • Luís Pimenta
    Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal.
  • Norberto Jorge Gonçalves
    Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, 5001-801 Vila Real, Portugal.
  • Carlos Albuquerque
    Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing (UICISA: E), Nursing School of Coimbra (ESEnfC), 3046-851 Coimbra, Portugal.
  • Carlos Cunha
    CISeD-Research Centre in Digital Services, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, 3504-510 Viseu, Portugal.
  • Eftim Zdravevski
    Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Saints Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia.
  • Petre Lameski
    Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, SS. Cyril and Methodius University, 1000 Skopje, North Macedonia.
  • Nuno M Garcia
    Department of Informatics, Instituto de Telecomunicações and ALLab Assisted Living Computing and Telecommunications Laboratory, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal.
  • Ivan Miguel Pires
    Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade da Beira Interior, 6200-001 Covilhã, Portugal; Computer Science Department, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, 3504-510 Viseu, Portugal; UICISA:E Research Centre, School of Health, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, 3504-510 Viseu, Portugal. Electronic address: impires@it.ubi.pt.