Digital Scale: Open-Source On-Device BMI Estimation from Smartphone Camera Images Trained on a Large-Scale Real-World Dataset

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Manichand, Frederik Rajiv, Deuber, Robin, Jakob, Robert, Swerling, Steve, Rosen, Jamie, Fleisch, Elgar, Langer, Patrick
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Manichand, Frederik Rajiv
Deuber, Robin
Jakob, Robert
Swerling, Steve
Rosen, Jamie
Fleisch, Elgar
Langer, Patrick
author_facet Manichand, Frederik Rajiv
Deuber, Robin
Jakob, Robert
Swerling, Steve
Rosen, Jamie
Fleisch, Elgar
Langer, Patrick
contents Estimating Body Mass Index (BMI) from camera images with machine learning models enables rapid weight assessment when traditional methods are unavailable or impractical, such as in telehealth or emergency scenarios. Existing computer vision approaches have been limited to datasets of up to 14,500 images. In this study, we present a deep learning-based BMI estimation method trained on our WayBED dataset, a large proprietary collection of 84,963 smartphone images from 25,353 individuals. We introduce an automatic filtering method that uses posture clustering and person detection to curate the dataset by removing low-quality images, such as those with atypical postures or incomplete views. This process retained 71,322 high-quality images suitable for training. We achieve a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 7.9% on our hold-out test set (WayBED data) using full-body images, the lowest value in the published literature to the best of our knowledge. Further, we achieve a MAPE of 13% on the completely unseen~(during training) VisualBodyToBMI dataset, comparable with state-of-the-art approaches trained on it, demonstrating robust generalization. Lastly, we fine-tune our model on VisualBodyToBMI and achieve a MAPE of 8.56%, the lowest reported value on this dataset so far. We deploy the full pipeline, including image filtering and BMI estimation, on Android devices using the CLAID framework. We release our complete code for model training, filtering, and the CLAID package for mobile deployment as open-source contributions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20534
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Digital Scale: Open-Source On-Device BMI Estimation from Smartphone Camera Images Trained on a Large-Scale Real-World Dataset
Manichand, Frederik Rajiv
Deuber, Robin
Jakob, Robert
Swerling, Steve
Rosen, Jamie
Fleisch, Elgar
Langer, Patrick
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Estimating Body Mass Index (BMI) from camera images with machine learning models enables rapid weight assessment when traditional methods are unavailable or impractical, such as in telehealth or emergency scenarios. Existing computer vision approaches have been limited to datasets of up to 14,500 images. In this study, we present a deep learning-based BMI estimation method trained on our WayBED dataset, a large proprietary collection of 84,963 smartphone images from 25,353 individuals. We introduce an automatic filtering method that uses posture clustering and person detection to curate the dataset by removing low-quality images, such as those with atypical postures or incomplete views. This process retained 71,322 high-quality images suitable for training. We achieve a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 7.9% on our hold-out test set (WayBED data) using full-body images, the lowest value in the published literature to the best of our knowledge. Further, we achieve a MAPE of 13% on the completely unseen~(during training) VisualBodyToBMI dataset, comparable with state-of-the-art approaches trained on it, demonstrating robust generalization. Lastly, we fine-tune our model on VisualBodyToBMI and achieve a MAPE of 8.56%, the lowest reported value on this dataset so far. We deploy the full pipeline, including image filtering and BMI estimation, on Android devices using the CLAID framework. We release our complete code for model training, filtering, and the CLAID package for mobile deployment as open-source contributions.
title Digital Scale: Open-Source On-Device BMI Estimation from Smartphone Camera Images Trained on a Large-Scale Real-World Dataset
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20534