Mobile Computer Vision-Based Applications for Food Recognition and Volume and Calorific Estimation: A Systematic Review

The growing awareness of the influence of “what we eat” on lifestyle and health has led to an increase in the use of embedded food analysis and recognition systems. These solutions aim to effectively monitor daily food consumption, and therefore provide dietary recommendations to enable and support lifestyle changes. Mobile applications, due to their high accessibility, are ideal for real-life food recognition, volume estimation and calorific estimation. In this study, we conducted a systematic review based on articles that proposed mobile computer vision-based solutions for food recognition, volume estimation and calorific estimation. In addition, we assessed the extent to which these applications provide explanations to aid the users to understand the related classification and/or predictions. Our results show that 90.9% of applications do not distinguish between food and non-food. Similarly, only one study that proposed a mobile computer vision-based application for dietary intake attempted to provide explanations of features that contribute towards classification. Mobile computer vision-based applications are attracting a lot of interest in healthcare. They have the potential to assist in the management of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, ensuring that patients eat healthily and reducing complications associated with unhealthy food. However, to improve trust, mobile computer vision-based applications in healthcare should provide explanations of how they derive their classifications or volume and calorific estimations.