Google's Im2Calories can calculate calories in a meal through pictures

Google is working on a new app which can calculate calories in a meal through pictures of the food/meal. Google named it as Im2Calories. Im2Calories will rely on image-processing or image recognition technology to identify the food in pictures, and by analyzing the pixels it will estimate the number of calories in the food.

As the app can't identify some things in the food like the oil you are using, etc. So, it means you can’t get an exact calorie count, you can get a relatively accurate range according to Kevin Murphy, Google’s research scientist. But the app can learn from it's experience. For example, when you takes a picture of the food, the app analyzes what it sees, it spits out a report listing what it believes it has found: fried rice, tomato, onion, etc. At this point the user has the option to edit and make corrections to the report, say user can change fried rice to boiled rice which will tell the app that the rice were boiled and were not fried. After that the app will make the corrections and tell the new report to the user with more accuracy than the last one and it will also add a note to its database so that it would not make the same mistake in the future.

Google has recently filed for a patent for Im2Calories, but it is not known when the app might be available. Murphy said the app was being developed as a research project, which simply means that there are no plans of releasing it for now. But if the users demands for it, or if the app shows high accuracy, then that could make the app launch sooner in the public.