Research at Oyster

Making skin measurable, understood and cared for, everywhere.

Oyster is AI infrastructure for beauty, built in Africa and accurate on every skin tone. Our research asks what beauty and skin health become when skin is finally something you can measure, for everyone on earth.

We work with researchers, clinicians, engineers and partners who want skin to be understood. If any of this is yours, join us in any capacity. Write to research@oysterskin.ai.

Cover of Oyster's computer vision and clinical skin analysis report
Technical & clinical report

Pushing the Boundaries of Computer Vision in Skin Analysis

A Technical & Clinical Analysis of the Oyster Skin Intelligence Engine.

How Oyster analyses deeper skin tones, checks photo quality and matches products. The report also explains its AI model and data practices.

Authors: Jude Jr. Chikezie, Dr Chelsea Emeh MD, Emeka Adirije and Barakat Salam.

Oyster Skin Research Lab Inc · 30 pages · PDF · 9.8 MB

Accurate on every skin toneDeep skin is the baseline for everything we build, not an edge case we get to later.
A human in the loopA qualified aesthetician validates the model, so what a person trusts is advice that holds up.
Grounded in what we can measureThese are research directions, honestly stated. We publish what holds and retire what does not.
01

Sensing and measurement

Turn an ordinary camera into a clinical instrument, and read skin at a depth a selfie never reaches.

Four projects
In progressComputer vision

Hyperspectral skin on any camera

Reconstruct hyperspectral skin signatures from a commodity phone camera, so clinical grade sensing no longer needs clinical grade hardware.

In progressImaging

Reading beneath the surface

Extend Oyster's proprietary photon method to map hydration, pigment and vascularity at increasing depth, from a single capture.

ExploringSensing

Camera free skin sensing

Read skin from ambient light and low cost sensors, for the many settings where a camera is not the right instrument.

ExploringHardware

The at home grading device

A small device that grades skin the same way every day, turning single scans into a trend line a person can actually watch.

02

Foundation models and fairness

One model that reads skin across every tone, knows when it is unsure, and never has to leave the person who owns the face.

Four projects
In progressFoundation models

A skin foundation model

A single model that reads structure, tone and concern across every Fitzpatrick type, so accuracy on the deepest skin is the standard, not a patch.

In progressData

Synthetic skin to close the gap

Generate faithful synthetic skin across tones and conditions, so the fairness gaps that real world datasets leave open can be closed on purpose.

ExploringPrivacy and edge

Analysis that runs on device

Run a full scan on the phone itself, so skin data never has to leave the person who took it, even where connectivity is thin.

In progressReliability

Models that know their limits

Uncertainty aware analysis that says clearly when it is not sure, and hands that case to a human instead of guessing.

03

Skin health and longevity

Watch skin change over years, model how it responds, and route the rare early signal to a real clinician.

Four projects
ExploringLongevity

A longitudinal aging model

Model how a person's skin changes across years, and what actually moves the curve, from a series of scans rather than a single moment.

ExploringSimulation

Skin twins

A living digital twin of a person's skin that simulates how it will respond, before anything is ever put on the face.

PartneringClinical

Early signals to real clinicians

Detect the rare pattern that deserves a professional eye and route it to a qualified clinician, without ever posing as a diagnosis.

ExploringBiology

Microbiome aware care

Bring the skin microbiome into analysis and recommendation, so care works with the skin's own ecology rather than against it.

04

Personalization and agents

A routine that reasons about ingredients, adapts to a life in motion, and shows the result before it happens.

Four projects
In progressAgents

Agentic skincare

A routine that reorders itself before a product runs out and adjusts as the skin responds, quietly, in the background.

ExploringAugmented reality

Treatment simulation in AR

Show a plausible result of a routine or a treatment on a person's own face, months ahead, in augmented reality.

ExploringPersonalization

Routines that read your world

Care that adapts to weather, travel, sleep and hormonal cycles, because skin does not live in a laboratory.

In progressReasoning

An ingredient reasoning engine

A recommendation engine that reasons about actives, interactions and order of use, not just the label on the box.

05

Access, commerce and industry

Measurement at population scale, intelligence that tells brands what to make next, and a field held to open standards.

Four projects
PartneringTrials

Clinical trials as a service

Run skincare and cosmetic efficacy studies at population scale, with measurement that stays consistent across every participant.

In progressCommerce

Demand intelligence for brands

Turn anonymised skin trends into a signal that tells brands what to formulate next, by region and by tone.

PartneringAccess

Skin analysis for low connectivity

Bring reliable analysis to pharmacies and clinics on slow or intermittent connections, so access never depends on bandwidth.

Open callBenchmarks

Open benchmarks for deep skin

Publish open benchmarks for skin AI accuracy on the deepest tones, so the whole field can be measured against a standard anyone can see.

Get involved

If you want skin to be understood, we want to work with you.

Researchers, clinicians, engineers, brands and institutions. Bring a dataset, a question, a method or a doubt. There is room here in any capacity.

research@oysterskin.ai