Scientists are developing tools for measuring biological age with photographs

It is no secret that some people appear to age faster than others, especially after enduring a stressful period. However, some scientists believe that a person's physical appearance may reveal more about them than they would be in the eye. It becomes the health of tissues and cells, a concept known as “biological age.”

in New researchResearchers, published on Thursday in Lancet Digital Health, estimated the biological age of cancer adults by training artificial intelligence and analyzing facial photographs. Researchers from General Brigham found that research participants with younger estimations tended to be better than those older with AI.

Findings suggest that estimates of people's biological age are closely related to physical health, which may reflect their ability to survive a particular treatment, the study authors said. And in the future, facial age analysis may be more useful than age alone in helping doctors make harsh calls to patients about treatment, they added.

Face-based aging tools have “extraordinary possibilities” to help doctors estimate how healthy a patient is quickly and inexpensively. This is compared to using blood or saliva to measure chemical and molecular changes associated with aging, said William Maia, a Harvard Chance School professor of molecular metabolism, who has not been involved in the study. Although doctors usually visually estimate how healthy a patient is for their age, he added that such tools can extract more data and make better estimates.

Faceage is a machine learning tool created by researchers at Mass General Brigham, which discovered that cancer research subjects appear to be five years older than time series. The biological age of cancer-free individuals was usually closer to their actual age. And those classified as older were more likely to die of either cancer or other causes.

Researchers were not the first to find the link between facial and organism aging. Research in Denmark It was found that subjects who appear older than their age tend to die faster than twins. Other studies A similar conclusion has been reached.

Faceage was trained with a database of over 56,000 images over 60 years old, and sourced primarily from Wikipedia and the film database IMDB, and then researchers asked them to evaluate using only photographs of ages where most people had cancer.

One day, doctors can use faces to determine whether to provide different treatments depending on the patient's estimated biological age, said Dr. Raymond H. Mc, radiation oncologist at the popular general Brigham who worked on the study.

A 69-year-old hairdresser and a cancer patient under Dr. Mark's care, Tonifeather was one of the study participants who looked younger than her age. Mrs. Feather, who lives in Upton, Massachusetts, said Dr. Mac explained that her appearance (about 10 years younger than her age) could reflect biological resilience. (Mrs. Feather has undergone several rounds of lung cancer surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, but she continues to work once a week and regularly cares for her younger grandchild.)

Preliminary data suggest that the face is beyond the visual markers we see, such as wrinkles, gray hair and hair loss, and instead suggest that it is not a much obvious factor, such as temple cries (reflecting loss of muscle mass) and skin bumps on either side of the mouth.

The authors of this study hope to ultimately commercialize the technology and create products that can be used in physician offices. They plan to file a patent once the technology is developed more.

There are restrictions on the current version of the tool. It was mainly trained with white faces, Dr. Mac said, so it could work differently for people with different skin tones. It is also unclear how modifications such as plastic surgery, makeup, lighting, and facial angles will affect the outcome.

And although biological aging can be accelerated by many factors such as stress, pregnancy, smoking, Drinking alcohol And more Extreme heatsome of these changes may be reversible – And it's not clear whether the tool will pick up those changes over time.

Medical ethics experts are also concerned.

“I am very concerned about whether this tool will work equally in all groups, including women, older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, people with a variety of disabilities, pregnant women,” said Jennifer E. Miller, co-director of Yale University's biomedical ethics program.

She and others on the scene also thought that the tool might be used to justify refusing to cover insurance or treatment.

Dr. Mac and other researchers who worked on this study also reserved. “We're really worried about the potential misuse of common technology,” he said. However, researchers added that they found the tool to be more useful than harmful. And it can be used to support clinician decisions, but could not be replaced.

It is unclear whether Facege results are more accurate, scalable or inexpensive than existing tools for estimating biological age, said Daniel Belsky, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who co-led to the development of Dunedinpace, a widely used, exogenous watch.

“There's a long way to go between where we are today and actually using these tools in a clinical setting,” Dr. Belsky said.