A refrigerator appliance is provided including a cabinet defining a chilled chamber, a door rotatably hinged to the cabinet to provide selective access to the chilled chamber, and a camera assembly mounted to the cabinet for monitoring the chilled chamber. A controller is operably coupled to the camera assembly and is configured to obtain a raw image using the camera assembly, analyze the raw image to identify an anchor object, crop the raw image to generate a reduced image surrounding the anchor object, and analyze the reduced image to identify a food item being added to or removed from the chilled chamber.