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Tech4Diet: 4D modelling and visualization of the human body to improve adherence to dietetic-nutritional intervention of obesity

Projects

This work is supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) under project TIN2017-89069-R. It is also supported by the University of Alicante with the project GRE16-28.

Principal Investigators: Jorge Azorin Lopez

Reference: TIN2017-89069-R

Funded by: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad

Duration: 2018-2020

Funding: 84.216 €

This project is aimed at improvement the obesity treatment, from a multidisciplinary perspective by using state of the art technology of 3D modeling or virtual reality to study currently unsolved problems related to the adherence treatment. This opens new opportunities to study dietary and nutritional aspects and provides new challenges in technological research.

Nowadays, over 50% of Spanish population older than 18 years has overweight and obesity problems, which directly increases the risk for multiple chronic diseases (hypertension, diabetes, cancer…) and impairments in cognitive and functional status of patients. These problems have been found to be related to a reduction in quality of life and an increase in the healthcare system. The costs associated to these illnesses are estimated in a range of 0.09 and 0.61%or the GDP of Europe. The lack of adherence to the treatment has been considered one of the main causes of intervention programs failure, making the obesity as a chronic illness. Influence in the adherence treatment will lead to an improvement of treatments and their continuity over time, directly affecting in a reduction of costs in healthcare system.

Recent studies show that the adherence to the treatment can be improved by using multimedia technologies which impact in the cognitive functioning of patients. However, there are no studies published to date using 4D and virtual reality technologies for this purpose. These results suggest that obesity treatments might be improved by using 4D body visual systems, that leads to a better cognitive experience during the weight loss process and adherence increment. Moreover, the multidisciplinary approach of this project will allow to open new metrics studies for the obesity treatment.

Taking into account these hypotheses, this project aims to obtain a 4D visual model of human body to analyze the morphological progress due to changes by the obesity treatment. This 4D model will be used to develop a visualization system of the body for improving the obesity treatment from different points of view, to provide to the user an immersive and realistic simulation of the evolution of the treatment by using virtual reality, and examining the effect of these realistic simulations in the obesity treatment. Moreover, tools developed to allow the analysis of new indexes based on anthropometric parameters and their evolution over time.

Eventually, the proposed methodology for modelling the morphological change of human body will be a challenge in terms of research. The use of 3D low-cost technologies (RGBD), which apart from affordability, they are versatile, portable and ergonomic, mean that unsolved problems in the scientific literature have to be tackled, in articulated and non-rigid registration. These features will allow the introduction in different levels of healthcare system, leading to a high social and economic impact of this project, as well as scientific.

Goals

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Team

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Publications

2018

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