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Technology

AI can count a meal’s calories based on images from a wearable camera

By Matthew Sparkes

19 May 2021

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

AI can estimate how many calories are in this dish just based on a picture

haoliang/Getty Images

An artificial intelligence that interprets images from wearable cameras can identify food and accurately estimate its weight to determine how many calories a person is consuming and what nutrients they are ingesting, which could be useful for automating dietary research.

at Imperial College London and his colleagues asked 13 subjects to wear cameras around their chests or mounted on glasses to capture images at mealtimes. The cameras took photographs every few seconds and algorithms automatically discarded more than 90 per…

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