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Deep learning approaches in food recognition

Automatic image-based food recognition is a particularly challenging task. Traditional image analysis approaches have achieved low classification accuracy in the past, whereas deep learning approaches enabled the identification of food types and their ingredients. The contents of food dishes are typically deformable objects, usually including complex semantics, which makes the task of defining their structure very difficult. Deep learning methods have already shown very promising results in such challenges, so this chapter focuses on the presentation of some popular approaches and techniques applied in image-based food recognition. The three main lines of solutions, namely the design from scratch, the transfer learning and the platform-based approaches, are outlined, particularly for the task at hand, and are tested and compared to reveal the inherent strengths and weaknesses. The chapter is complemented with basic background material, a section devoted to the relevant datasets that are crucial in light of the empirical approaches adopted, and some concluding remarks that underline the future directions.