WildCam: A Privacy Conscious Wearable Eating Detection Camera People Will Actually Wear in the Wild

Wearable Electronic Devices Clinical Trial

Official title:

WildCam: A Privacy Conscious Wearable Eating Detection Camera People Will Actually Wear in the Wild

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT05547425
• Other study ID #: STU00213549
• Secondary ID: 1R03DK127128-01
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 20, 2022
• Est. completion date: March 21, 2023

Study information

• Verified date: October 2023
• Source: Northwestern University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

WildCam is a wearable device that collects video data of the user's face and upper torso to capture eating behaviors. WildCam and its accompanying software is privacy conscious, meaning it utilizes a computer vision algorithm that extracts proximal features (the user's body and objects-in-hand) from the video and digitally obfuscates the distal features (background environment and entities therein) to preserve the privacy of the wearer, as well as any bystanders who may be in the device's visual field. The present study tests the impact of 3 different obfuscation techniques on acceptability, including the willingness of users to wear the device. Participants are randomly assigned to 1 of the 3 obfuscation techniques (blurring, masking, or cartooning). Participants wear the WildCam during waking hours during a 7-day period with the randomly selected obfuscation setting enabled and a 7-day period with the raw images (no obfuscation) setting. The order of these periods is counterbalanced, and the two periods are separated by a 7-day washout period during which WildCam is not worn. Structured feedback, including user burden and acceptability surveys, is collected to determine the efficacy of each obfuscation technique on increasing user acceptability, including willingness to use the WildCam device, as opposed to a video-collecting device without obfuscation.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 30
• Est. completion date: March 21, 2023
• Est. primary completion date: March 21, 2023
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 64 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• BMI 30 or greater

• Chicago Metro Area resident

• Able to speak, read, and write in English

• Valid phone number

• Smartphone ownership

• Have Wi-Fi at home

Exclusion Criteria:

• 15% or greater weight change in last 3 months

• Medication related weight gain

• Genetic obesity syndrome (e.g., Prader-Willi, Bardet-Biedl, Cohen Syndrome)

• Member of household enrolled in study

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Wearable Electronic Devices

Intervention

Device:
• Blur Obfuscation
Blurring is applied to objects and people in the background of images.
• Edge Obfuscation
Objects and people in the background of images are replaced with an outline of the object.
• Cartoon Obfuscation
Blurring is applied to objects and people in the background of images and the wearer's face is concealed with cartoon faces.
• Raw images
No editing is performed on images.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Northwestern University Department of Preventive Medicine	Chicago	Illinois

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Northwestern University	National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Mean Wear Time	Average duration in minutes of data collected per day, calculated from video time stamps	7 days
Secondary	Acceptability	Score (0-80) obtained from User Burden Scale (Suh. et al 2016), collected post-study	7 days