Biological age from a selfie, thanks to a new AI algorithm

Determine the biological age of a person simply from a selfie: it is now possible thanks to a new Artificial Intelligence algorithm, FaceAge, which converts a photo of the face into a number that reflects the age demonstrated instead of that established by the date of birth. Trained on tens of thousands of photographs, this algorithm gives cancer patients an average of 5 years more than their chronological age, and could therefore help doctors determine who is able to tolerate aggressive treatments, and those who instead need a more aggressive approach more delicate. The study was published in the journal The Lancet Digital Health from the group led by the American Mass General Brigham, affiliated with the School of Medicine of Harvard. Aging occurs at different rates for each individual, influenced by a myriad of factors including genes, lifestyle life, stress, exercise and habits such as smoking and alcohol. researchers coordinated by Raymond Mak and Hugo Aerts have trained FaceAge on nearly 59,000 images of people supposedly healthy over 60 years old, and then they put him to test with over 6,000 cancer patients, using photos taken shortly before radiotherapy. The latter demonstrate a biological age more advanced than the chronological one, and the more this the more the discrepancy increases the more it is predictive of a worse rate of survival, especially for those whose biological age exceeds 85 years. FaceAge seems to evaluate the signs of aging differently than humans humans: for the algorithm, having gray hair or being bald matters much less than slight changes in muscle tone of the face. However, this new tool also poses some problems ethical: for example, discovering one's biological age could trigger healthy changes but also generate anxiety, or the algorithm could be used by insurance companies and employers against the interest of the people. "It is definitely something to pay attention to - says Aerts - to ensure that these technologies are used only to benefit of the patient".