Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, May 10: Artificial Intelligence is stepping beyond lab data and X-rays and now looking cancer patients in the face—literally. In a breakthrough study, researchers have developed an AI tool called FaceAge, which can estimate a person’s biological age just by analyzing their facial features. And it’s proving to be a game-changer in predicting cancer survival outcomes.

Developed at Mass General Brigham, FaceAge uses deep learning to assess how a person’s face reflects their underlying health. The tool was trained on nearly 59,000 images of healthy individuals, helping it learn how features like skin texture, wrinkles, and facial structure correlate with the body's biological age. When applied to over 6,000 cancer patients, the AI revealed a striking pattern: patients whose "FaceAge" appeared older than their real age tended to have lower survival rates.

According to researchers, cancer patients typically looked about five years older biologically than their actual age when compared to individuals with non-cancerous or precancerous conditions. This seemingly simple visual clue turned out to be powerful—so powerful that when doctors used FaceAge alongside standard assessments, the accuracy of predicting six-month survival for patients in palliative radiotherapy jumped from 61% to 80%.

But why does biological age matter so much? Unlike chronological age—the number of years you’ve been alive—biological age reflects the wear and tear on your body. Genetics, lifestyle, and environment all shape this age, and it can better predict how resilient a patient might be during treatment. A healthy 75-year-old with a biologically younger profile might withstand cancer therapies more successfully than a 60-year-old with signs of advanced aging.

The implications for cancer care are huge. FaceAge could help doctors customize treatment plans more precisely, choose between aggressive or conservative approaches, and communicate prognosis more clearly with patients. It might even motivate patients to make lifestyle changes that can positively influence their health outcomes.

While FaceAge won’t be replacing human doctors anytime soon, it’s a powerful addition to the medical toolkit—one that reads more than just scans and charts. It reads the human face, and in doing so, it’s helping to rewrite the future of cancer care.