A pervasive Dietary Data Recording System

Electronic sensors and various digital devices have been quite successful in improving collection of physical activity data in a pervasive manner, and we believe that advances in dietary assessment can be achieved using similar strategies. Dietary assessment is a critical yet understudied component within the domain of recent advances in electronic health records management. The design of a system for real-time recording of food intake requires considerable research to optimize both system characteristics and data collection procedures, and rigorous validation to confirm its superiority compared to paper-based methods for self-report. We propose to demonstrate a functional prototype of a Dietary Data Recording System (DDRS), which consists of an electronic data collection device and the software and protocols necessary to support data capture and calculation of nutrient intake. A key innovative feature of the DDRS is the use of a video camera and a laser-generated grid of distances to food surfaces, which allows calculation of food volume. This prototype system is a first step in designing an overall framework to support a realistic and rigorous evaluation of whether real-time, electronic collection of dietary data is feasible, acceptable and valid for better health data management. Components demonstrated include a real-time data collection application based on the Google Android OS, a stream based data transfer and on the fly evaluation.