Acoustical method for objective food intake monitoring using a wearable sensor system

A method for non-invasive monitoring of human food intake behavior and long-term dietary protocol has been developed by the sole use of chewing and swallowing sound sensors. A hierarchical model of daily food intake is introduced for dietary protocol. Microphones were found to be more useable for this recording task than accelerometers. Hence, a novel sensor system has been built containing two microphones in a hearing aid case in order to record chewing and swallowing sounds in the ear canal and environmental noise, respectively. Records of the intake sounds of 51 participants consuming seven types of food and one drink were taken for the development of detection and classification algorithms.