A new can scan your face to determine your biological age. That information can be used to determine treatment options for a number of patients, including how aggressively to treat patients with diseases like cancer or other chronic illnesses.
鈥淲e tested the medical impact of this technology by applying it across several thousand cancer patients to analyze their face age,鈥� said Dr. Ray Mak, an oncologist at Mass General Brigham and lead author of the study, 鈥淎nd what we found is that patients that looked older had the worst survival outcomes.鈥�
6 questions with Dr. Ray Mak
What does biological age mean?
鈥淪o, we typically think of age as a chronological age, the age based on your date of birth. But we also know that people age at differing rates. A biological age would be a measure of how old somebody is based on their physical and physiological state. And what people may not know is that doctors often use biological age to make important decisions.
鈥淚鈥檓 an oncologist, and oftentimes we have to make these tough decisions. We鈥檒l use chronological age in what we call risk calculators, decision support tools to decide whether we should offer a tough treatment like chemotherapy or radiation. But then we have to use the subjective assessment, the clinician鈥檚 judgment, to understand how healthy is a patient.
鈥淪o, a person who has a high biological age looks a lot older than their chronological age, that鈥檚 someone where we might have to think about de-intensifying their cancer treatment or providing them with more supportive care to get through the treatment.鈥�
How do you know if it鈥檚 accurate?
鈥淲e can look across thousands of patients that we presume are healthy and look at the correlation between the chronological age and biological age. There is some variation, but in a healthy population, that variation that we鈥檙e seeing, the face age is accurate within plus or minus four years.
鈥淪o, it鈥檚 not a tool that鈥檚 gonna allow you to say like, 鈥楢m I 35 or 35 and a half?鈥� But it鈥檚 a tool that allows you to say, 鈥楾his is a 35-year-old that looks like a 50-year-old. There might be some problems here.鈥欌��
Should doctors be relying solely on technology like this or is it just another tool in the toolbox?
鈥淚 think of this as another tool in the toolbox, so that just like vital signs, blood tests, medical imaging, we now have another quantitative data point for doctors that use in their decision making.鈥�
What exactly is this technology looking at on the face?
鈥淭hat鈥檚 one of the really hard things about these artificial intelligence technologies. There鈥檚 some inherent black-box nature to it. Oftentimes, we don鈥檛 know what it鈥檚 looking at.鈥�
How could you prevent this technology from being misused?
鈥淯ltimately, we decided to pursue it because we thought it was important for one, that the potential benefits might outweigh those concerns. Many AI technologies are double-edged swords in that manner, but the other important part of why we did this research is to raise awareness that not only is your face reflective of your identity, but also reflective of your health.
鈥淎nd with that awareness, we hope that regulatory groups, research scientists like us, can create those ethical and regulatory safeguards to prevent that kind of misuse.鈥�
What鈥檚 next for technology of this kind?
鈥淚 think we have a long road ahead before it鈥檚 commonly used in the clinic. Some of the short-term goals we have are to improve the accuracy of the face age predictions.
鈥楽o, we鈥檙e now training on 20 million photographs a new algorithm that can predict face age more accurately. And the last piece, which kind of gets into like the science fiction level, next steps is can we develop AI algorithms that not only predict face age, but facial health?
鈥淪o, for example, can we predict the likelihood of someone dying or can we predict the presence of a disease like cancer directly from a face photograph?鈥�
This interview has been edited for clarity.
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