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

我们寻求NSERC I2I资助，以加快将我们的透皮光学成像（TOI）技术推向市场的进程。我们开发的这项发明使用高分辨率数码相机和特殊的成像处理技术来获取面部皮肤上与情绪相关的不可见的血红蛋白浓度变化。我们第一次解决了在脸上检测无形情绪的问题，既无创又便宜。虽然我们的发明是一项通用技术，但我们选择市场研究和市场分析作为我们发明的第一个应用。这是因为，不可见的情感占我们日常情感的90%，反映了我们大多数真实体验的内心感受、想法和欲望，是我们大多数消费决策（如品牌忠诚度、购买行为）的驱动力。许多现有的情绪检测方法是侵入性的或昂贵的；其他非侵入性和廉价的技术完全依赖于面部表情，因此错过了我们90%以上的情绪。现状为我们的技术提供了巨大的市场机会。到目前为止，我们可以可靠地检测三种无形情绪（积极的，消极的和中性的），在实验室环境中准确率为90%左右。一些工业合作伙伴对我们的技术表示了初步的兴趣，并帮助我们了解将这项技术推向市场的需求和指标。在I2I的资助下，我们的目标是准备一个工程原型，将我们的技术从实验室规模转移到市场应用，用可控的情绪反应填充我们的数据库，并用真实的消费产品对我们的无形情绪检测系统进行市场测试，以确定我们系统的可行性。我们会制作一个交钥匙工程原型，方便市场分析和市场研究行业的最终用户进行beta测试。一旦全面测试，我们将在一个强有力的位置，建立一个新的，以加拿大为基础的创业公司，服务于加拿大和国际市场研究行业。该公司将创造新的就业机会，并对加拿大经济产生重大影响。

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.