NSERC I2I Phase I: Noninvasive transdermal optical imaging of invisible emotions

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We seek NSERC I2I funding to speed up the process of bringing our Transdermal Optical Imaging (TOI) Technology to the market place. This invention we have developed uses a high-resolution digital camera and special imaging processing techniques to obtain invisible emotion-related hemoglobin concentration changes on the facial skin. We, for the first time, solve the problem of detecting invisible emotions on the face both noninvasively and inexpensively. Although our invention is a general-purpose technology, we choose marketing research and market analytics as the first application of our invention. This is because emotions without a visible expression, which constitute as much as 90% of our daily emotions, reflect most of our genuinely experienced innermost feelings, thoughts and desires, and are the driving forces of most of our consumer decisions (e.g., brand loyalty, purchasing behavior). Many existing emotion detection methods are invasive or expensive; other noninvasive and inexpensive technologies rely exclusively on facial expression and thus miss more than 90% of our emotions. The status quo presents a huge market opportunity for our technology. To date, we can reliably detect three categories of invisible emotions (positive, negative and neutral) with >90% accuracy in the laboratory setting. Several industrial partners have expressed preliminary interest in our technology, and have helped us to understand the need and metrics to bring this technology to the market. With the I2I funding, we aim to prepare an engineering prototype to transfer our technology from the laboratory scale into market applications, to populate our database with controlled emotional responses, and to market-test our invisible emotion detection system with real consumer products to ascertain our system's viability. We will produce a turn-key engineering prototype to be readily beta-tested by end-users in the market analytics and marketing research industry. Once fully tested, we will be in a strong position to establish a new, Canadian-based start-up company to serve the Canadian and international market research industry. The company will create new job opportunities and have significant economic impacts on Canada.