Foodlog: Multimedia food recording tools for diverse applications

Abstract

Our daily food is an emerging target for multimedia research community. Health care field is paying considerable attention on dietary control, which requires that individuals record what they eat. We developed and made publicly available multimedia applications, that are, FoodLog, multimedia food recording tools that allow users to take photos of their meals and to produce food records. We developed two kinds of tools: One is FoodLog Web and the other is FoodLog app used by smartphones. In both systems, image processing techniques are incorporated. For example, in case of FoodLog app, unlike conventional smartphone-based food recording tools, it allows users to employ meal photos to help them to input textual descriptions based on image retrieval. We summarize the outline of FoodLog, its deployment in diverse applications including health care, and analysis of data captured by a year-long operation of FoodLog app.