Massachusetts Researchers: Your Selfies May Help Predict Diseases

If the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" is true, a selfie might help doctors gain important information about your health that could save your life.

Ah, the wonders of artificial intelligence, or AI.

Amazing new research here in Massachusetts could be a breakthrough in helping doctors diagnose illnesses before it's too late.

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Boston's WHDH-TV reports, "Researchers at Mass General Brigham have developed an AI tool that can soon use a picture of your face to help predict diseases."

The station says, "The tool, called FaceAge, uses a selfie to estimate your biological age. Researchers have found that patients with diseases like cancer often look about five years older than they really are, and those with an older 'face age' tend to have worse outcomes."

Mass General Brigham's web page says, its findings suggest the FaceAge tool could provide objective data to help inform treatment decisions in cancer care and other chronic diseases." It can also "predict survival outcomes for patients with cancer."

The FaceAge technology developed at Mass General Brigham is a "deep-learning algorithm."

Hugo Aerts, PhD, director of the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) program at Mass General Brigham, says, "We can use artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate a person's biological age from face pictures, and our study shows that information can be clinically meaningful."

The researchers say, "Estimated survival time at the end of life is difficult to pin down but has important treatment implications in cancer care."

"Further research is needed before this technology could be considered for use in a real-world clinical setting," say the Mass General Brigham researchers.