Every day, people put their teeth at risk by eating foods that contain a lot of sugar. A lack of brushing teeth causes the build-up of bacteria. The bacteria use the sugars present in these foods to cause the weakening of teeth and if left untreated, can lead to holes and cavities in teeth. The concept of “re-mineralization” is the idea of using minerals such as calcium to make teeth stronger and have them heal faster.

Brain wave technologies allow researchers and clinicians to monitor the brain at work. Our team has developed a new technology that uses electroencephalography (EEG) to provide an online record of different brain functions in a very short period of time. The brain waves recorded by this technology may change normally as time passes and previous MITACS funded work is characterizing the variation in brain waves in healthy individuals. In the current study we want to expand our findings into patient groups and new imaging technologies.

This proposal presents research projects to evaluate a new technology, Electrovestibulography (EVestGTM) that holds potential to objectively, quickly and quantitatively measure the severity of concussion, thus aiding in its diagnosis. EVestG signals are recorded painlessly and non-invasively from the external ear in response to a vestibular stimulus; they are the brain signals modulated by the vestibular response. When concussed, people commonly experience balance (vestibular) problems and dizziness, as well as confused thinking.

We would like to investigate the use of hearing aids in real life environments. Retrospective questionnaires are often subject to memory errors and recall biases. In order to obtain more accurate momentary evaluations of sound and noise, our proposed research involves asking participants to complete real-time evaluations in the laboratory and in their everyday environments. The momentary assessments will be recorded using a mobile evaluation tool.

Teaching medical students and allied healthcare professionals accurate and patient friendly diagnosis of ear, eye and nasal conditions are challenging tasks due to the lack of realistic models and interaction with patients. The OONTTDP is a collaboration between the Hospital for Sick Children and Otosim to improve the teaching results through development of realistic simulators with various conditions embedded within an easy to use system.

With the advances of medical imaging, cardiac images have posed great challenges in processing and analysis due to the large amount of data generated. Dynamic Computer Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images, also referred to as 4D (3D+time) imaging, for example, have great capacity for screening, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of cardiac diseases. However, the tools to handle the image files are insufficient to best use the time of specialists such as radiologists and cardiologists.