Body Composition Estimation Based on Multimodal Multi-task Deep Neural Network

In addition to body weight and Body Mass Index (BMI), body composition is an essential data point that allows people to understand their overall health and body fitness. However, body composition is largely made up of muscle, fat, bones, and water, which makes estimation not as easy and straightforward as measuring body weight. In this paper, we introduce a multimodal multi-task deep neural network to estimate body fat percentage and skeletal muscle mass by analyzing facial images in addition to a person's height, gender, age, and weight information. Using a dataset representative of demographics in Japan, we confirmed that the proposed approach performed better compared to the existing methods. Moreover, the multi-task approach implemented in this study is also able to grasp the negative correlation between body fat percentage and skeletal muscle mass gain/loss.