Home-Based Monitoring of Eating in Adolescents: A Pilot Study

Ghassan Idris,Barbara Galland,Mauro Farella,Christopher John Robertson,Rachael Taylor,Claire Smith

doi:10.3390/nu13124354

Ghassan Idris, Barbara Galland + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13124354

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Abstract

Objectives: To investigate eating episodes in a group of adolescents in their home-setting using wearable electromyography (EMG) and camera, and to evaluate the agreement between the two devices. Approach: Fifteen adolescents (15.5 ± 1.3 years) had a smartphone-assisted wearable-EMG device attached to the jaw to assess chewing features over one evening. EMG outcomes included chewing pace, time, episode count, and mean power. An automated wearable-camera worn on the chest facing outwards recorded four images/minute. The agreement between the camera and the EMG device in detecting eating episodes was evaluated by calculating specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy. Main results: The features of eating episodes identified by EMG throughout the entire recording time were (mean (SD)); chewing pace 1.64 (0.20) Hz, time 10.5 (10.4) minutes, episodes count 56.8 (39.0), and power 32.1% (4.3). The EMG device identified 5.1 (1.8) eating episodes lasting 27:51 (16:14) minutes whereas the cameras indicated 2.4 (2.1) episodes totaling 14:49 (11:18) minutes, showing that the EMG-identified chewing episodes were not all detected by the camera. However, overall accuracy of eating episodes identified ranged from 0.8 to 0.92. Significance: The combination of wearable EMG and camera is a promising tool to investigate eating behaviors in research and clinical-settings.

Highlights

Electromyography (EMG) is used to assess masticatory muscle activity and is considered the gold standard method to assess chewing activity
We aimed to test the agreement between the eating episodes detected by the camera and those detected by the EMG device, we considered the EMG device to be the gold standard, as it has been previously validated [34]
Sensitivity was estimated to be 0.34 and ranged from 0.00 to 0.92, whereas specificity was estimated to be 0.99 and ranged from 0.94 to 1.00. This pilot study demonstrated that a wearable camera has reasonable accuracy for determining the number of evening eating episodes in adolescents in their natural home setting

Summary

Introduction

Electromyography (EMG) is used to assess masticatory muscle activity and is considered the gold standard method to assess chewing activity. It can accurately identify chewing episodes and their features such as the occurrence time, amplitude, duration, and pace, i.e., the frequency rate of chewing strokes [1]. Previous studies have predominantly investigated chewing features in adults using standardized test foods, mostly chewing gum [9,10,11], and have used visual observation or self-report to evaluate the outcome variables [12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. Little information is currently available regarding chewing function in the natural environment, especially in adolescents, and novel techniques are required to objectively evaluate chewing as it naturally occurs outside of laboratory settings

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