SBIR Phase I: A computer vision system for calorie tracking to encourage adherence to customized weight-loss regimens

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是帮助美国2100万超重或肥胖的非洲裔美国女性中的60%，这些女性患糖尿病和心血管疾病的风险比一般人群更严重。该项目通过其定制数据库克服了非裔美国女性体重管理的障碍。拟议中的自动食物追踪器与社交网络功能相结合，以激励新用户参与该应用程序。这些功能为用户提供了一个强大的工具，以实现健康的身体质量指数和保持健康的一生。这个拟议中的项目是一个移动减肥管理应用程序，帮助非裔美国人管理饮食和跟踪体育活动。它帮助妇女建立适当营养的知识，并遵循健康的生活方式，从而提高遵守饮食和运动养生法的比率。该应用程序的创新之处在于通过图像识别和机器学习算法自动跟踪用户的食物摄入量。这一创新为非裔美国人社区常见的食物创建了一个独特的数据集，标记了碳水化合物、卡路里、蛋白质、脂肪和份量。这个自动过程提供了一个框架，消除了当前解决方案所需要的手工计算所造成的障碍。此外，它还将整合一个类似游戏的界面，以提高用户粘性，从而获得更好的长期体重管理结果。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to help the 60% of the 21 million African American women in the US who are overweight or obese, increasing their risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease in greater severity than the general population. This project overcomes barriers to weight management in African American women through its customized data library. The proposed automated food tracker is combined with a social network function to incentivize new users to engage with the application. These features provide a powerful tool for the user to achieve a healthy body mass index and maintain health over a lifetime.The proposed project is a mobile weight-loss management application to help African American manage diet and track physical activity. It helps women build their knowledge of proper nutrition and follow a healthy lifestyle, thereby improving adherence rates for diet and exercise regimens. The application's innovation is to automate the tracking of food intake from the users with image recognition and machine learning algorithms. This innovation creates a unique data set for foods common in the African American community, labeling the carbohydrates, calories, proteins, fats, and serving size. This automatic process provides a framework that eliminates the barriers created by the manual calculations that current solutions require. Furthermore, it will incorporate a game-like interface to increase engagement for better long-term weight management outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.