A Cellular Telephone-Based Application for Skin-Grading to Support Cosmetic Sales

We have developed a sales-support system for door-to-door sales of cosmetics based on a system called Skin-Expert, a skin-image grading service that includes analysis and diagnosis. Several parameters are extracted by image processing, and the skin grading is done by rules generated by data mining from a baseline of grades given by human skincare experts. Communication with the Skin-Expert is through a cellular telephone with a camera, using email software and a Web browser. Salespeople photograph the customer's skin using the camera in a standard cellular telephone and then send an email message that includes the picture as an attachment to our analysis system. Other parameters associated with the customer (for example, age and gender) are included in the body of the message.