Meal Detection Device Separating Overlapping Heart Rate Peaks

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Solution Overview

Problem

The accuracy of meal intake detection decreases when heart rate peaks overlap due to a short interval between meals, as existing techniques struggle to accurately differentiate between consecutive meal-related heart rate increases.

Innovation Solution

A meal intake detection device and method that utilizes a CPU, heartbeat measuring device, and acceleration sensor to detect and correct overlapping heart rate peaks by calculating feature vectors and separating meal intake candidates based on heart rate patterns, improving detection accuracy.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If heart rate monitoring is used to detect meal intake, then meal detection capability is provided, but detection accuracy decreases when meals are consumed at short intervals causing heart rate peak overlap

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvemeal intake detection accuracyVSAvoiddetection reliability under short meal intervals
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments overlapping heart rate peaks by identifying local maxima and dividing the continuous heart rate data into distinct meal-related segments. Each segment is analyzed independently to determine meal intake events, allowing accurate detection even when meals occur at short intervals without peak overlap confusion

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent applies partial action by selectively identifying only the significant heart rate peaks that correspond to actual meal intake, rather than treating all heart rate variations as meal-related. This selective approach filters out noise and non-meal-related heart rate changes, improving detection accuracy

Inventive Principle:
Principle #16Partial or excessive action

Data Source

PatentEP3372153B1Meal detection device, meal detection method, and meal detection program
Publication Date: 2023.05.03 FUJITSU LTD
  • EP3372153B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3372153B1 patent drawingFigure 2A~2B
  • EP3372153B1 patent drawingFigure 3A~3B

AI summary

A meal intake detection device includes: a detection unit configured to detect a rise of heart rate; a separation unit configured to extract as a meal intake candidate a time range from a detected rise by the detection unit to time when the heart rate decreases to a predetermined value in temporal changes in heart rate, and when a second meal intake candidate is extracted in a time range of an extracted first meal intake candidate, separate the first meal intake candidate and the second meal intake candidate along a predetermined line; and another detection unit configured to detect whether each of the first meal intake candidate and the second meal intake candidate is a meal intake based on feature quantities relating to the first meal intake candidate and the second meal intake candidate separated by the separation unit.