CAREER: Interactive Dietary Monitoring

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

While tracking sleep and physical activity such as walking is now commonplace using smartwatches and other wearable devices, keeping track of what a person eats and drinks remains an onerous task. From a health perspective, this is a missed opportunity; dietary self-monitoring is an effective way for people to reflect on and improve their eating habits, reducing the chance of developing costly diet-related chronic diseases such as obesity. This project addresses the weaknesses of existing dietary monitoring methods by advancing a new approach called Interactive Dietary Monitoring. The idea is to envision dietary tracking as a human-machine collaboration, combining the strengths of manual and automated food tracking. For example, people know what food they are eating, but can forget to make a note of it in the moment. Automated systems can detect when people are eating, but have limited insight into the identity of the foods. Thus, a collaborative approach can shore up the complementary weaknesses. To move this vision toward reality, the project team will prototype, evaluate, and refine novel wearable devices, algorithms, and visual interfaces for food tracking, with the goal of reducing the burden of dietary self-monitoring while keeping individuals aware of their eating behaviors. The devices and methods developed are likely to be useful for other pressing problems, including flagging behaviors associated with eating disorders and smoking events, measuring tremor in Parkinson’s disease patients, and helping nutritional epidemiologists understand the link between diet and disease. This project will advance the fields of human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing through (1) developing and evaluating algorithms to detect fine-grained finger motion and novel interaction techniques around diet tracking, (2) investigating sensing methods for alcohol drinking detection and food recognition from volatile organic compounds present in human breath, (3) producing new knowledge about developing wearable devices for dietary tracking, (4) exploring a new mobile food journal interface that leverages the relationship between color and nutrients to provide visual dietary insights, and (5) generating usability and algorithmic findings from the inclusion of older adults, seniors with chronic diseases, and under-represented individuals in studies. The outcomes of this proposal will be developed and assessed through a human-centered process consisting of formative studies, implementations, and evaluations in both controlled and naturalistic conditions. To enhance the impact and social reach of this research, the outcomes of the project will be embedded into graduate and undergraduate courses, the wearable platforms will be integrated into a science camp for economically disadvantaged students, and high school interns will play a role in the execution of the research. 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.