Researchers have developed an algorithm that uses a person’s photo to predict biological age and survival in cancer patients. The results of the technology, called FaceAage, were published on Thursday (8) in The Lancet Digital Health.
From the researchers’ point of view, the work shows that a photo, such as a simple selfie, contains important information that can help in clinical decisions and treatments plans for patients and doctors.
Biological age is one that reflects the functional condition of the human body, and is not necessarily aligned with the chronological age of a person. For example, a sedentary individual, who is a smoker and drinks alcohol may have a more advanced biological age due to his unhealthy lifestyle than his age in relation to the date of birth.
According to the study, forecasts of the face to indicated a more advanced biological age were associated with worse general survival results in various types of cancer. They also found that the algorithm exceeded doctors in the forecast of short -term life expectations for patients who received palliative radiotherapy.
“We can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to estimate a person’s biological age from face photos, and our study shows that information can be clinically significant,” said senior and correspondent study of Study Hugo Aerts, director of the Mass General Brigham Artificial Intelligence Program (AIM) in a statement.
How was AI developed?
Researchers at Mass General Brigham, the United States Hospital Research Company, used deep learning technologies and facial recognition to train FaceAge. The tool was trained with 58,851 photos of allegedly healthy individuals of public data sets.
The team tested the algorithm in a cohort of 6,196 patients with two centers cancer, using photographs taken routinely taken at the beginning of radiotherapy treatment.
The results showed that cancer patients appear to be significantly older than those without cancer, and their face, on average, was about five years older than their chronological age.
Among cancer patients, a more advanced face was associated with worse survival outcomes, especially in individuals who appeared to be over 85, even after adjustments to chronological age, gender and cancer type.
Next Steps
More research is needed before this technology can be considered for use in a real clinical environment. The team is testing the algorithm to predict disease, general health and life expectancy.
Follow -up studies include the expansion of this work to different hospitals, the analysis of patients at different cancer stages, the monitoring of face estimates over time and the testing of their accuracy in plastic surgery and makeup data sets.
“This opens the doors to a new field of biomarkers discovery from photographs, and its potential goes far beyond cancer treatment or age forecasting,” says senior co -author of study Ray Mak, member of the AIM program at Mass General Brigham, in a statement.
“As we increasingly consider different chronic diseases such as aging diseases, it is even more important to accurately be able to accurately predict an individual’s aging trajectory. I hope we can ultimately use this technology as an early detection system in various applications, in a solid regulatory structure and ethics, to help save lives,” he adds.
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This content was originally published in Ia USA Selfie to predict cancer survival, shows a study on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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