Dr Alice Ojwang - Carbo AI: An Artificial Intelligence-Based Photographic Application to Support Dietary...

IAS Residential Fellow Dr Alice Ojwang delivers a seminar on their research, fully titled "Carbo AI: An Artificial Intelligence-Based Photographic Application to Support Dietary and Lifestyle Education for the Management of Type 2 Diabetes" - Type 2 diabetes is a rapidly growing global health challenge, with dietary management central to its prevention and control. However, estimating the carbohydrate content of meals remains difficult, particularly for locally consumed foods. Carbo AI is an artificial intelligence-powered mobile application that uses photographic image recognition, computer vision, and machine learning to identify foods, estimate portion sizes, calculate carbohydrate content, and provide instant dietary guidance. The project was led by the Human Nutrition and Dietetics Team in the Department of Health and Biomedical Sciences, Technical University of Kenya, in collaboration with experts in computer science, medical physics, and software engineering. Development was supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure and KENET's High-Performance Computing (HPC) platform. Carbo AI aims to improve carbohydrate literacy, strengthen diabetes self-management, enhance nutrition counselling, and demonstrate the potential of interdisciplinary AI-driven innovations to improve health outcomes. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias