A new AI tool called FaceAge can accurately estimate a person's biological age from a single facial photo, potentially revolutionizing medical assessments. Developed by researchers at Mass General Brigham, FaceAge uses deep learning algorithms to analyze facial features and predict biological age more accurately than chronological age alone.
Trained on tens of thousands of photos, the AI learns subtle aging patterns, which can help doctors tailor treatments and predict outcomes for procedures like heart surgery, hip replacements, or cancer care. For example, cancer patients, on average, appear approximately five years older biologically than healthy individuals. A higher FaceAge score in cancer patients is associated with worse survival rates, even when considering factors like age, sex, and tumor type.
While FaceAge offers a non-invasive way to assess health using selfies, ethical concerns exist regarding privacy, potential misuse, and biases in AI algorithms. Researchers are actively addressing these issues and plan to make FaceAge publicly available for ongoing studies, with commercial versions for clinicians potentially following after further validation. This technology aims to provide more personalized medicine, but it is not intended to replace clinical judgment.