Can your face reveal how long youll

live? New technology may provide the

answer.
Researchers are working on technology that will look at the way a person's face has
aged so far to estimate how it may age in the future. (Nicki Dearco!"he #ashington
$ost%

BY TARA BAHRAMPOUR July 2 at 1:59 PM
Imagine that an insurance underwriter comes to your house and, along
with noting your weight and blood pressure, snaps a photo of your face.
And that those wrinkles, mottled spots and saggy parts, when fed into a
computer, could estimate how long you will live.
Facial recognition technology, long used to search for criminals and to guess how a
missing child might look as an adult, may soon become personal. A group of
scientists is working on a system that would analyze an individuals prospects based
on how his or her face has aged.
We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older,
more rapidly than others, and some more slowly, said ay !lshansky, a
biodemographer at the "niversity of #llinois at $hicago who came up with the idea.
%And we also know that the children of people who senesce more slowly tend to live
longer than other people.
&he research is still in its early stages, but the idea of using facial recognition
technology has prompted interest from insurance company e'ecutives who see
potential for using it in determining premiums, !lshansky said. &heres also a
potential benefit for individuals( &he technology might prod them to change their
health habits before its too late.
Cheek and &owl
&he technology involves using a computer to scan a photograph of a face for signs
of aging. Factoring in the sub)ects race, gender, education level and smoking
history * all known to affect longevity prospects * it would analyze each section of
cheek, eye, brow, mouth and )owl looking for shading variations that signal lines,
dark spots, drooping and other age+related changes that might indicate how the
person is doing compared with others of the same age and background.
As the "nited ,tates skews increasingly older, research into e'tending life span
and, in particular, increasing the number of healthy years is a boom topic for public
and private entities.
-oogle last fall announced $alico, a new enterprise focusing on aging and
associated diseases, for which it has been recruiting top scientists. it has not
revealed details of its plans or how much it is investing. Another organization,
/uman 0ongevity #nc., headed by the well+known genomics researcher $raig
1enter, launched this spring with plans to build a database of human 23A
se4uencing to tackle diseases of aging. it raised 567 million in an initial round of
funding.
And the 3ational #nstitutes of /ealth recently launched an unprecedented
collaborative initiative across 87 of its 86 specialized institutes to address aging and
longevity. 3ational #nstitute on Aging director 9ichard /odes said the 3#/ would
also like to work on the topic with some of the emerging organizations.

' new system uses a complicated algorithm and a growing data(ase of faces to assess
how old parts of a persons face appear to (e. Researchers (ehind the site hope to one
day link the appearance of aging to longevity. )eres what the computer said a(out two
$ost reporters.
&he economic and social implications could be staggering. 3ot only will living to
:77 become more common one day, longevity e'perts say, but the 4uality of life in
the final decades might also be drastically improved, reducing the burdens imposed
by an aging population.
#ncreasing life e'pectancy by 8.8 years by slowing aging would save 56.: trillion in
disability and entitlement programs over ;7 years, according to apaper in /ealth
Affairs co+authored by !lshansky, who is also a research associate at the "niversity
of $hicagos $enter on Aging.
0ongevity scientists say the key to e'tending healthy life lies in focusing on aging
itself rather than on aging+related diseases. <ven minor progress in slowing the
aging process would be more groundbreaking than ma)or progress that tackles )ust
one illness, they say.
#n fact, drugs already in use for some age+related diseases may turn out to work
because they are delaying aging overall.
We may be at the beginning of a time when drugs approved for diabetes or
macular degeneration are actually working because they are delaying the onset of
aging, said 2an =erry, founder of the Alliance for Aging 9esearch, a Washington+
based advocacy group.
And while it is not yet clear whether humans will one day live :;7 years, as some
have predicted, scientists are optimistic that the number of years of healthy life *
or %health span * of humans can be significantly increased and the infirmities
associated with aging reduced.
Aging is not such a deep part of our biology that it cant be changed, said ,teven
Austad, chair of the biology department at the "niversity of Alabama at
>irmingham. %All this stuff seemed like science fiction a few years ago, but now we
have it, at least in mice.
' personal approach
&he idea for the facial recognition pro)ect came to !lshansky a couple of years ago
during dinner with an insurance underwriter . %/e was complaining that he had a
very short time to assess peoples survival prospects and that the methods used to
do it were too blunt, !lshansky said.
!lshansky, whose work includes e'ploring the limits to human longevity, slowing
aging and studying health and public+policy implications of individual and
population aging, knew that people who live longer generally look younger than
other people of their age. /e wondered whether that knowledge could translate into
something more scientific.
/e contacted ?arl 9icanek, a professor of computer science at the "niversity of
3orth $arolina at Wilmington, who has worked on facial recognition technology for
the 3ational ,ecurity Agency, the $#A, and the F>#. along with a biostatistician and
other computer scientists, they developed a program to analyze photographs of
faces.
&hey have launched a Web site inviting anyone in the world to submit a photo. &he
database they are developing, called Face @y Age, is e'pected to deliver
increasingly more accurate assessments and predictions as more people participate.
&he researchers are hoping for large numbers of people * at least :7,777 or
87,777, but preferably more * to submit photos and basic biographical
information in e'change for feedback on how 4uickly they are aging and what this
means for their longevity prospects. &he person in the photo cannot smile or have
makeup on, and must reveal if he or she has had plastic surgery.
&he techni4ue is more personalized than the current approach to face aging.
&he technology that is out there utilizes group norms, so they can artificially age
you, 9icanek said. %>ut . . . the lines they paint on your face are actually the same
as the lines they paint on my face, AwhereasB the ones were using are individual.
#nitially the site will give users only one number * their apparent ages * but as it
becomes more refined, it should be able to assign perceived ages to different parts
of the face, !lshansky said.
#magine taking your i=hone and snapping a selfie and putting it into our Web site
and discovering that your eyes are that of a ;7+year+old, your lips are that of a 67+
year+old, your cheeks are that of a ;7+year+old, he said.
&he algorithms work differently for people of different genders and ethnic groups,
9icanek said. For e'ample, the skin of lighter+complected individuals, which has
less melanin, tends to age more as a result of sun e'posure than the skin of people
with darker comple'ions. Womens faces tend to age more 4uickly than mens
because of different distributions of fat and blood vessels.
#ait and see
#t wont be clear how well the technology works until enough participants die and
the researchers can see how good their estimates were. >ut the pro)ect recently got
a boost when it gained access to several thousand photos taken years ago of people
who have subse4uently died. knowing the date of death for so many will allow the
Web site to start providing users with even more reliable life span estimates in the
ne't :8 to :C months, !lshansky said.
#f successful, it could be used not only by insurance companies but also by health
advocates, financial institutions and other scientists.
&he concept is intriguing * if it works, said 3ir >arzilai, director of the #nstitute for
Aging 9esearch at the Albert <instein $ollege of @edicine in 3ew Dork. >ut he said
it is not clear whether skin appearance alone can reveal deeper signs of aging.
Dou really want to see if the skin biomarker is associated with other disease, he
said.
>arzilai, who works with centenarians, said he plans to submit photos of some of
his sub)ects, ages E7 to ::E, to the database.
ames ?irkland, director of the ?ogod $enter on Aging at the @ayo $linic in
9ochester, @inn., said that more important than estimating a persons life span
would be predicting his or her functional state, which !lshanskys database will not
do. >ut like many discoveries that end up contributing to science in une'pected
ways, %it could be part of a pipeline that eventually results in something, he said.
$otential for (ias
<thical and practical concerns may also arise, said 0eonard Fleck, a professor of
philosophy and medical ethics at @ichigan ,tate "niversity.
<ven if it can predict life span, the analysis might not be able to predict a persons
need for long+term care, he said. And it could open the door for discrimination.
#f at age F7 if there were something about your face saying youre not likely to
make it past E7, an employer could say, G!h, #m not willing to promote you to some
position of importance because its not likely to be a good investment, Fleck said.
And people who look younger than their years do not always last long, said @ark
$ollins, president of the $alifornia+based -lenn Foundation, which funds aging
research. %,ometimes people who look very healthy drop dead in the middle of the
track, while others who look crinkled are still running at age C7, he said.
!lshansky conceded that even if face aging is found to correlate with longevity,
there will be outliers who dont fit the general pattern.
&he longest+lived person in the world smoked for :77 years, he said, adding that
".,. presidents, too, tend to be outliers, aging visibly faster in office but generally
living longer than average.
/owever, he said, for the most part a face is a window onto a persons overall
health.
&he face picks up a lot of risk factors for health, such as tobacco smoking Hwrinkles
around the mouthI. e'cessive alcohol consumption Hlarger noseI. and e'cessive
e'posure to the sun Hearly brown spots and wrinklingI as well as stress, he said in
an e+mail.
At the very least, learning the results of ones face+age analysis may nudge
participants to try to e'tend their healthy life spans by adopting good habits.
#f someone came to you and said that your life e'pectancy, for e'ample, is five
years from now, you would think pretty hard and long about whats going on in
your life, 9icanek said. %#t can make us wake up and change some of the things
that were doing * maybe were stressing out too much about our )ob. maybe we
need to make different lifestyle decisions. # would like to shake people up.
9elated(
A pill that slows the aging processJ ,cientists are close.
$an # see your #2J Aging technology confirmed his hunch
@y weak spot in terms of aging is in the area under my eyes
=osted by &havam