[Invited Paper] Multimedia FoodLog: Diverse Applications from Self-Monitoring to Social Contributions
[Invited Paper] Multimedia FoodLog: Diverse Applications from Self-Monitoring to Social Contributions
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DOI：
10.3169/mta.1.214
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发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
3.6
通讯作者：
K. Aizawa
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Aizawa
在世界上许多地方，肥胖是一个日益严重的健康问题，饮食控制在医疗保健领域受到了相当大的关注。然而，大多数饮食控制程序要求用户手动记录所有膳食的详细信息。对于普通人来说，这是一项繁琐的任务，这可能会阻止他们参加这样的节目。随着数码相机和智能手机的广泛使用，人们现在可以在大多数日常活动中轻松获得相机。因此，他们可以使用自己用餐的照片作为饮食摄入量的记录。此外，与文字或表格描述相比，图像包含的关于餐饮的信息要丰富得多。最近的一项研究表明，仅仅是在用餐前拍下一张照片，就能促进减肥。因此，图像在快速、轻松地记录饮食信息方面是非常有希望的候选对象。然而，尽管容易记录饮食信息很重要，但对于有效的饮食管理来说，记录饮食信息并不总是足够的。饮食计划的参与者定期会见顾问，顾问分析收集的数据并根据这些数据给出建议。如果这一步骤更频繁，但同时费用和时间更少，结果将会大大改善。根据这些观察结果，我们提出并推出了FoodLog4)，这是一个基于网络的多媒体应用程序，可以帮助普通人以最小的努力记录和管理他/她的饮食活动。用户不需要创建每顿饭的详细记录，只需使用数码相机或智能手机拍摄一张照片。该应用程序使用图像分析来检测用户S个人多媒体档案中的餐饮图像，消除了用户选择和上传这些图像的需要。进一步的图像分析估计膳食的营养成分，并将结果记录在数据库中。用户可以以各种格式访问网络上的图像和结果，如果图像分析错误，可以修改信息，并可以在相关的地方添加额外的信息。在本文中，我们首先描述食品记录保存的状态，这通常涉及到医疗保健服务机构出具的纸质表格。然后我们展示FoodLog，这是一个应用程序，允许用户保留基于照片的饮食视觉记录，从而创建和维护食物日志。我们还描述了与食品相关的信息处理方面的工作。FoodLog最初是一个基于网络的应用程序，后来被应用于几个智能手机应用程序(App)，我们对此进行了描述。我们还介绍了我们最近在FoodLog扩展方面所做的工作。我们在本文中的目的是概述FoodLog及其应用，而不是讨论其技术细节。除了原来的功能外，FoodLog还可以应用于各种应用程序。我们描述了一个例子，FoodLog被用来产生捐款，为贫困儿童提供学校午餐。我们一直在开发FoodLog，这是一个多媒体系统，使用户能够通过拍摄他们的食物照片来维护他们的食物摄入量记录。在本文中，我们描述了FoodLog的功能和各种应用，而不是它的技术细节。FoodLog不仅有益于监控食物摄入量，还可用于其他几个目的。在FoodLog的研究和开发过程中，我们与一个非营利性组织合作，利用它为非洲国家的儿童筹集捐款。我们还概述了当前正在开发的FoodLog的一些扩展。
Obesity is a growing health concern in many parts of the world1) and dietary control has received considerable attention in the healthcare field. However, most dietary control programs require users to manually record detailed information on all meals. This is a tedious task for an ordinary person, which can be a deterrent to taking part in such programs. With the widespread use of digital cameras and smartphones, people now have easy access to a camera during most of their daily activities. They can therefore use photographs of their meals as a record of dietary intake. In addition, images contain much richer information about the meals than textual or tabular descriptions. A recent study showed that merely taking a photo of a meal before eating it could encourage weight loss2). Therefore, images are highly promising candidates for the rapid and easy recording of dietary information. However, although important, ease of recording dietary information is not always sufficient for effective dietary management. A participant in a dietary program regularly meets a consultant, who analyzes the collected data and gives recommendations based on them. If this step were made more frequent, but at the same time less costly and time-consuming, the results would be greatly improved. In the light of these observations, we proposed and launched FoodLog3)4), a web-based multimedia application that can assist an ordinary person to record and manage his/her dietary activities with minimal effort. Instead of creating a detailed record of each meal, the user simply takes a photograph, using a digital camera or a smartphone. The application uses image analysis to detect images of meals in the user' s personal multimedia archive, eliminating the need for the user to select and upload them. Further image analysis estimates the nutritional composition of the meals, and records the results in a database. The user can access the images and the results on the web in a variety of formats, can revise the information if the image analysis was erroneous, and can add extra information where relevant. In this paper, we first describe the state of food record keeping, which usually involves paper-based forms issued by healthcare services. We then present FoodLog, an application that allows users to keep photo-based visual records of their meals, thereby creating and maintaining a food log. We also describe works related to food-related information processing. FoodLog was originally a web-based application that has since been applied to several smartphone applications (apps), which we describe. We also introduce our recent work on extensions to FoodLog. Our aim in this paper is to outline FoodLog and its applications, rather than to discuss its technical details. In addition to its original function, FoodLog can be applied to a diverse range of applications. We describe an example of FoodLog being used to generate donations that fund school lunches for impoverished children in Abstract We have been developing FoodLog, a multimedia system that enables users to maintain a record of their food intake simply by taking photos of their meals. In this paper, we describe the functions and various applications of FoodLog, rather than its technical details. FoodLog is beneficial not only for monitoring food intake but also for several other purposes. During the research and development of FoodLog and in collaboration with a nonprofit organization, we employed it to generate donations for children in African countries. We also outline some extensions to FoodLog that are currently under development.