The new FaceAge AI tool can reveal your ‘biological age’ as researchers use it to compare Hollywood actors Paul Rudd and Wilford Brimley at the age of 50 – with wildly different results
A quick selfie could reveal to doctors how healthy someone is and how long they will live.
A new FaceAge AI tool can estimate a person’s “biological age” – as opposed to their actual age – by scanning an image of their face to predict the survival chances of cancer patients. Scientists say people age at different rates so their physical appearance may help give insights into how old a person is physiologically.
This biological age is based on many factors including lifestyle and genetics and can predict overall health and life expectancy. Researchers from Mass General Brigham network of hospitals in the US trained their algorithm using 59,000 photos.
Author Dr Hugo Aerts said: “Our study now has shown for the first time that we can really use AI to turn a selfie into a real biomarker source of ageing. The impact can be very large, because we now have a way to actually very easily monitor a patient’s health status continuously and this could help us to better predict the risk of death or complications after, say, for example, a major surgery or other treatments.”
Scientists wanted to examine whether biological age could be examined based on how a person looks. This is similar to what doctors call the “eyeball test” – whereby certain judgments are made based on how a person looks, such as whether or not someone could undergo intensive cancer treatment based on how frail they appear to be.
But the research team said their “deep learning” FaceAge tool went beyond this when used on 6,200 patients with cancer using images taken at the start of their treatment.
The academics found that the biological age of patients with cancer was, on average, five years older than chronological age. The findings, published in the journal Lancet Digital Health, showed that older FaceAge readings were associated with worse survival outcomes among patients with cancer, especially in people who had a FaceAge older than 85 years old.
The research team published an example referencing a popular online meme showing how the tool assessed the biological age of Hollywood actors Paul Rudd and Wilford Brimley based on photographs of the men when they were both 50 years old.
Rudd’s biological age was calculated to be 42.6, while Brimley, who died in 2020, was assessed to have a biological age of 69. Paul Rudd, now aged 56, appeared in the TV series Friends and films including Anchorman, 40-Year-Old Virgin and Ant Man. Wilford Brimley appeared in films including The China Syndrome in 1979, The Thing in 1982, Tender Mercies in 1983, The Natural in 1984 and Cocoon in 1985.
Dr Ray Mak, co-senior author on the paper, said the selfie tool could be used by medics as “another piece of the puzzle like vital signs, lab results or medical imaging”. He said: “We have demonstrated that AI can turn a simple face photo into an objective measure of biological age, that clinicians can use to personalised care for patients, like having another vital sign data point.
“We want to be clear that we view AI tools like FaceAge as assistance provide decision support and not replacements for clinician judgment.”
More studies assessing FaceAge are under way, including whether it could be used for other conditions or diseases and what impact things like cosmetic surgery or Botox have on the tool.