Survey on Food Intake Methods using Visual Technologies

Assessing food intake is important for reasons of well-being, lifestyle, health, appearance, or fun. Particularly in the field of medicine, the intake of appropriate foods and quantities of food is considered elementary and always related to physical activity. Various food tracking techniques exist, ranging from pen-based, purchase-based, calorie-counting to camera-based systems. Here, it is important that automated systems can recognize ingredients and estimate quantities. Therefore, there are many camera-based systems, but they differ in terms of accuracy, speed or performance. This review provides an overview of existing technologies and describes new approaches in the area of volume-sensitive sensing methods using lidar and true-depth technologies.