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Comparative Study
. 2018 Jun 7;10(6):741.
doi: 10.3390/nu10060741.

A Comparative Study on Carbohydrate Estimation: GoCARB vs. Dietitians

Maria F Vasiloglou  1 , Stavroula Mougiakakou  2   3 , Emilie Aubry  4 , Anika Bokelmann  5 , Rita Fricker  6 , Filomena Gomes  7 , Cathrin Guntermann  8 , Alexa Meyer  9 , Diana Studerus  10 , Zeno Stanga  11
Affiliations
Comparative Study

A Comparative Study on Carbohydrate Estimation: GoCARB vs. Dietitians

Maria F Vasiloglou et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

GoCARB is a computer vision-based smartphone system designed for individuals with Type 1 Diabetes to estimate plated meals' carbohydrate (CHO) content. We aimed to compare the accuracy of GoCARB in estimating CHO with the estimations of six experienced dietitians. GoCARB was used to estimate the CHO content of 54 Central European plated meals, with each of them containing three different weighed food items. Ground truth was calculated using the USDA food composition database. Dietitians were asked to visually estimate the CHO content based on meal photographs. GoCARB and dietitians achieved comparable accuracies. The mean absolute error of the dietitians was 14.9 (SD 10.12) g of CHO versus 14.8 (SD 9.73) g of CHO for the GoCARB (p = 0.93). No differences were found between the estimations of dietitians and GoCARB, regardless the meal size. The larger the size of the meal, the greater were the estimation errors made by both. Moreover, the higher the CHO content of a food category was, the more challenging its accurate estimation. GoCARB had difficulty in estimating rice, pasta, potatoes, and mashed potatoes, while dietitians had problems with pasta, chips, rice, and polenta. GoCARB may offer diabetic patients the option of an easy, accurate, and almost real-time estimation of the CHO content of plated meals, and thus enhance diabetes self-management.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; carbohydrate counting; computer vision; dietitian; smartphone; type 1 diabetes; visual estimation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sample images sent to dietitians.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Outline of the procedure including dietitians and GoCARB.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Scatterplot of Ground Truth (GTR) and dietitians’ carbohydrates (CHO) estimations (in grams), and (b) Scatterplot of Ground Truth (GTR) and GoCARB CHO estimations (in grams).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Boxplot of errors per food category for dietitians and GoCARB. Data falling outside the lower and upper quartiles of are plotted as outliers of the data (black points).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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