title: Monitoring eating habits using a piezoelectric sensor-based necklace.
abstract: Maintaining appropriate levels of food intake and developing regularity in eating habits is crucial to weight loss and the preservation of a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, awareness of eating habits is an important step towards portion control and weight loss. In this paper, we introduce a novel food-intake monitoring system based around a wearable wireless-enabled necklace. The proposed necklace includes an embedded piezoelectric sensor, small Arduino-compatible microcontroller, Bluetooth LE transceiver, and Lithium-Polymer battery. Motion in the throat is captured and transmitted to a mobile application for processing and user guidance. Results from data collected from 30 subjects indicate that it is possible to detect solid and liquid foods, with an F-measure of 0.837 and 0.864, respectively, using a naive Bayes classifier. Furthermore, identification of extraneous motions such as head turns and walking are shown to significantly reduce the false positive rate of swallow detection.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles, United States. Electronic address: kalantarian@cs.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Haik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kalantarian
authors.affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles, United States. Electronic address: nabil@cs.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Nabil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Alshurafa
authors.affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles, United States. Electronic address: tuanle@cs.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Tuan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Le
authors.affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles, United States. Electronic address: majid@cs.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Majid
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sarrafzadeh
mesh_terms: D061725:Accelerometry; D000465:Algorithms; D003679:Deglutition / Q000502:physiology*; D004435:Eating / Q000502:physiology*; D004867:Equipment Design; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D019416:Head Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D059015:Wireless Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*
keywords: Necklace; Nutrition; Piezoelectric sensor; Wireless Health