Artificial teeth that detect when people chew, drink, speak and cough could help people track exactly how much they eat, along with other aspects of their health, researchers say.

In a study, the scientists used dental cement to glue sensors onto the teeth of eight volunteers. The devices were accelerometers that recognized movement in all three dimensions, and were coated with dental resin to keep them safe from saliva. Thin wires connected to the sensors helped collect their data.

The researchers had the volunteers chew gum, drink a bottle of water, cough or read a section of an article. The participants spent about 40 seconds on each activity.

“Our mouth is an opening into our health — our drinking and eating behaviors shed light on our diet,” said researcher Hao-hua Chu, a computer scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei. “How frequently we cough also tells us about our health, and how frequently we talk is related to social activity that can be related to health.”

Each of these activities moves teeth in a unique way. When it came to recognizing what a study participant was doing based solely on data from the devices, the system researchers developed was up to 93.8 percent accurate

Source: huffingtonpost