Overview

• FaceAge, developed by Mass General Brigham, uses AI to estimate biological age and predict survival outcomes from facial photographs.
• The algorithm has shown promise in retrospective studies, outperforming clinicians in predicting life expectancy for cancer and palliative-care patients.
• Researchers plan to enroll 50 patients in a pilot study within the next two weeks to evaluate its utility in clinical workflows.
• FaceAge was trained on nearly 59,000 photos of presumed healthy individuals but may face accuracy challenges with diverse populations due to training data biases.
• Ethical concerns, including privacy, data ownership, and demographic fairness, remain central to the ongoing development and regulatory approval process.