How was DQPN developed?

The original inspiration for the DQPN approach was the phoropter, the device used routinely in ophthalmology and optometry offices to calibrate the exact corrective lens personalized to any given eye.

The phoropter presents two fully formed side-by-side images and invites the user to choose the clearer of the pair. This process is repeated until the sharpest possible image is identified, signifying the ideal correction (i.e. “best possible fit”) for visual acuity in diopters. This is in stark contrast to a recall method that might invite patients to recall their visual acuity over some time period, under diverse conditions, and then attempt to describe it in a questionnaire, followed by an attempt to infer the suitable correction from those details.

Diet Quality Photo Navigation (DQPN) adapts the phoropter approach to dietary assessment. Rather than asking a user to recall their diet one food item at a time, DQPN presents relevant, fully formed composite images of established dietary patterns and invites the user to select the image most like their own, current food intake. The process is repeated until “best possible fit” is achieved, just as with the phoropter. With this method, a baseline dietary pattern can be identified within seconds to minutes.