Towards an Ambient Survey of Consumption Quantities to Support the Nutrition Counseling Process for People affected by the Geriatric Frailty Syndrome

Stereoscopic cameras allow for the capturing of three-dimensional objects and their volumes in an efficient and ambient way. This work evaluates to what extent this technology can be used to estimate consumption quantities to improve the data basis for nutritionists in the geriatric context for people affected by the frailty syndrome. For this purpose, a system that allows measurements without manual calibrations or additional markers was developed. These measurements result in so-called point clouds that have to be post-processed for further analysis since they they cannot be used directly for the calculation of consumption food quantities. Due to the high dimension of the parameter space of the possible filters and statistical methods and their permutations, a preliminary evaluation is outlined that results in a set of configurations that generally allow for stable measurements. The determined configurations are then further investigated for their accuracy and stability under different lighting conditions and consumption food quantities. Estimated quantities are compared with the plate protocol as one state of the art method in the geriatric and rehabilitation context. The results show that stereoscopic cameras have the potential to be used for the estimation of food intake quantities.