// BBC HEALTH NEWS — SALUTE
Can a simple photo of your face reveal how ill you are?
An AI tool may be able to help doctors judge how ill a patient is using a single photograph of their face, say US researchers.
Trained on millions of healthy faces, and 35,000 photos of cancer patients, the tool can make estimates on survival by looking closely at features near the eyes, the scientists say.
While it's a long way from being suitable for use in hospitals, the researchers say their goal is to help doctors recommend the right treatments for their patients.
The preliminary findings are published in the Lancet Digital Health, external journal.
The researchers developed two AI tools to estimate biological age and predict cancer survival from a single face photo. The face on the left shows features most important to cancer survival outcomes, while the right face shows those key to age. Areas shown in yellow had the greatest impact on predictions.
The 'FaceSurvival' AI tool suggests the area under the eyes and around the bridge of the nose are the most vital parts of the face to assess when estimating how long they might have left to live.
These metrics applied across many different types of cancers, varying in severity, including ones that had spread to the patient's bones or brain.
Most of the cancer patients, who were from the US and the Netherlands, were in their 50s or 60s, but some were children, while others were in their 90s.
Doctors already examine patients and run comprehensive checks and tests to judge how unwell they are, and what their prognosis might be.
The AI tool, which has a patent application pending, is designed to help doctors doing this work, not replace them.