Posted Nov 19, 2010
NTT Communications Corp. has developed image recognition software that can count calories based on photographs of food.
The company plans to use this software to develop a smartphone diet management application enabling people to count calories by simply taking pictures of what’s on their plates.
Existing software requires the dieter to key in the food and calorie information, discouraging use. But the new software evaluates the colors and shapes of foods in the captured images and compares them against a database of more than 100,000 different foods to find the best matches. Portion sizes are also deduced from the images in order to compute calorie counts.
The information is stored on a server operated by NTT Communications and can be quickly accessed via smartphone. When the calculated calorie counts appear wrong, users can enter corrections to update the data. This feedback process will help increase the analysis precision of the software over time.
NTT Communications is testing the app in-house and plans to offer a free beta version to the public this coming January.
The app can display meal and calorie information in the form of a timeline so that friends can egg each other on. And in the future, features will be added to suggest changes to meals or extra exercise to reduce or burn off calories.