Fluid intake recognition for nursing care support by leveraging swallowing sound

Abstract

Japan is rapidly becoming an aging society, with the average age of the population rising year by year. In care work, recording and managing the health of the elderly is important, but this is becoming more difficult as the information that must be managed and record increases, and in many cases must be recorded manually. This has increased an enormous burden on caregivers. To automatically recorded the health of the elderly, thus reducing the burden on caregivers, we propose a water intake automatic recording method using sound data collected using a throat microphone. In the proposed method, fluid intake is automatically recognized by using the frequency and amplitude characteristics of swallowing sounds recorded by a throat microphone. By applying this method, we were able to detect fluid intake with 95% accuracy and estimate the mouthful amount of drinking with a 3.33 ml RSME.