How a photo of a person’s face could help predict whether they’ll survive cancer treatment

A simple selfie could hold surprising clues to your overall health and longevity, especially among people with cancer. Researchers at Mass General Brigham in Boston have developed artificial intelligence models that they say can predict a cancer patient’s biological age and chances of survival using nothing more than a single photograph of their face. The research, published Monday in the journal The Lancet Digital Health, suggests that facial analysis could become an additional tool for doctors to consider when evaluating a patient’s chances of survival and when deciding which treatment approaches may work best for their cancer patients. “I was pretty surprised to find out that we could pick up signs of mortality risk from just a facial photograph,” said study author Dr. Raymond Mak, a radiation oncologist at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute and a faculty member in the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine program at Mass General Brigham.