Size Matters: Reconstructing Real-Scale 3D Models from Monocular Images for Food Portion Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Vinod, Gautham, Coburn, Bruce, Raghavan, Siddeshwar, He, Jiangpeng, Zhu, Fengqing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Vinod, Gautham
Coburn, Bruce
Raghavan, Siddeshwar
He, Jiangpeng
Zhu, Fengqing
author_facet Vinod, Gautham
Coburn, Bruce
Raghavan, Siddeshwar
He, Jiangpeng
Zhu, Fengqing
contents The rise of chronic diseases related to diet, such as obesity and diabetes, emphasizes the need for accurate monitoring of food intake. While AI-driven dietary assessment has made strides in recent years, the ill-posed nature of recovering size (portion) information from monocular images for accurate estimation of ``how much did you eat?'' is a pressing challenge. Some 3D reconstruction methods have achieved impressive geometric reconstruction but fail to recover the crucial real-world scale of the reconstructed object, limiting its usage in precision nutrition. In this paper, we bridge the gap between 3D computer vision and digital health by proposing a method that recovers a true-to-scale 3D reconstructed object from a monocular image. Our approach leverages rich visual features extracted from models trained on large-scale datasets to estimate the scale of the reconstructed object. This learned scale enables us to convert single-view 3D reconstructions into true-to-life, physically meaningful models. Extensive experiments and ablation studies on two publicly available datasets show that our method consistently outperforms existing techniques, achieving nearly a 30% reduction in mean absolute volume-estimation error, showcasing its potential to enhance the domain of precision nutrition. Code: https://gitlab.com/viper-purdue/size-matters
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_20051
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Size Matters: Reconstructing Real-Scale 3D Models from Monocular Images for Food Portion Estimation
Vinod, Gautham
Coburn, Bruce
Raghavan, Siddeshwar
He, Jiangpeng
Zhu, Fengqing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Multimedia
The rise of chronic diseases related to diet, such as obesity and diabetes, emphasizes the need for accurate monitoring of food intake. While AI-driven dietary assessment has made strides in recent years, the ill-posed nature of recovering size (portion) information from monocular images for accurate estimation of ``how much did you eat?'' is a pressing challenge. Some 3D reconstruction methods have achieved impressive geometric reconstruction but fail to recover the crucial real-world scale of the reconstructed object, limiting its usage in precision nutrition. In this paper, we bridge the gap between 3D computer vision and digital health by proposing a method that recovers a true-to-scale 3D reconstructed object from a monocular image. Our approach leverages rich visual features extracted from models trained on large-scale datasets to estimate the scale of the reconstructed object. This learned scale enables us to convert single-view 3D reconstructions into true-to-life, physically meaningful models. Extensive experiments and ablation studies on two publicly available datasets show that our method consistently outperforms existing techniques, achieving nearly a 30% reduction in mean absolute volume-estimation error, showcasing its potential to enhance the domain of precision nutrition. Code: https://gitlab.com/viper-purdue/size-matters
title Size Matters: Reconstructing Real-Scale 3D Models from Monocular Images for Food Portion Estimation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Multimedia
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20051