OKU : Personal Skin Coach : is it real?

OKU Claims to be the first iPhone enabled Personal Skin Coach, and is now taking pre-orders on line.

The idea of an iPhone connected imaging interface that addresses the major challenges of reproducible and quantified skin imaging is definitely attractive, and there is a market for that..

But OKU's technology platform remains a big mystery. For engineers, the "OKU Technology" tab on the company website is simply disappointing. Name dropping "dermoscopy", "nanotechnology" and "spectroscopy" just alone simply does not work for us. Indeed, the potential of such technologies can be fantastic.... please tell us more! Show us how it works ( a little movie maybe ?) ... this is how you will make a difference as skin imaging is not trivial.

Having said that, and despite the cute but disappointing "marketing packaging" of the entire website (and lack of real product pictures, images and data), there are several product features that are quite attractive, including the portable imaging device and its docking station (please convince me that this is not "just" a webcam) and the simple and effective design of the iPhone App.

So in short....taking pre-orders at $249.95 for a due-date of "late Spring 2015" is a very aggressive call, and will probably convince grand parents who want to make a graduation present to their high-school grand-daughter with chronic acne. 

Please let's be serious.... show us a real product, explain your technology, show us real data and pictures to be more convincing. there is a lot going on in this industry and we all expect more fro a incoming player.

Google alerts are active on "OKU". We shall see.

French Start up ANAPIX Tackles the Holy Grail

French Start-up ANAPIX is currently incubated by the Technology Accelerator and incubator or Mareilles and has ambitious plans to takle the Holi Grail: a iPhone enabled image capture system...coupled to cloud-based image analysis and calculators to offer Clinical Decision support to dermatologists for the Skin cancer.

This is a very ambitious project, will challenges all along the technology workflow... and the care and regulatory trajectories.  A dozen of dermatologists are piloting the system in France.

ANAPIX is current;y looking for partners to take the concept to the next steps. Please reach out to them via www.sattse.com

"SKINSPECTION" – Hybrid Imaging for Skin Diagnosis

The "SKINSPECTION" approach combines two-photon imaging with time-correlated single photon detection, autofluorescence lifetime imaging, high-frequency ultrasound and optoacoustic imaging. 

The innovative combination of these modalities allows to obtain a wide-field view with quantitative depth information of skin lesions and a close-look into particular intra-tissue compartments with quantitative hyperspectral information and subcellular resolution. The goal of the project is to provide a novel unique tool for early diagnosis and treatment control of skin cancer and skin disease. For achieving this objective, two systems for microscopic and macroscopic imaging of lesions were developed in the last 3 years by the partners JenLab GmbH and Imperial College London (two-photon microscopy/FLIM) and Fraunhofer IBMT (Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering) and kibero GmbH (optoacoustic/ultrasound imaging). 

The systems were successfully certified for clinical studies and are currently being evaluated for imaging of skin lesions in a bicentric clinical trial at Hammersmith Hospital and Universita di Modena.

Check for the full research project description on the Europe FP7 webportal.