Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live? New technology may provide the answer.
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.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll 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 individual’s prospects based on how his or her face has aged.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
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 Jay Olshansky, a biodemographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago 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.”
The research is still in its early stages, but the idea of using facial recognition technology prompted interest from insurance company executives.
Who see potential for using it in determining premiums, Olshansky said.
There’s also a potential benefit for individuals.
The technology might prod them to change their health habits before it’s too late.
Cheek and jowl.
The technology involves using a computer to scan a photograph of a face for signs of aging.
Factoring in the subject’s race, gender, education level and smoking history — all known to affect longevity prospects.
It would analyze each section of cheek, eye, brow, mouth and jowl looking for shading variations that signal lines, dark spots,.
Drooping other age-related changes that might indicate how the person is doing compared with others of the same age and background.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
As the United States skews increasingly older, research into extending life span and, in particular, increasing.
The number of healthy years is a boom topic for public and private entities.
Google last fall announced Calico, 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, Human Longevity Inc., headed by the well-known genomics researcher Craig Venter, launched this spring.
With plans to build a database of human DNA sequencing to tackle diseases of aging.
It raised $70 million in an initial round of funding.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
And the National Institutes of Health recently launched an unprecedented collaborative initiative.
Across 20 of its 27 specialized institutes to address aging and longevity.
National Institute on Aging director Richard Hodes said the NIH would also like to work on the topic with some of the emerging organizations.
The economic and social implications could be staggering.
Not only will living to 100 become more common one day, longevity experts say, but the quality of life in the final decades.
Might also drastically improved, reducing the burdens imposed by an aging population.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
Increasing life expectancy by 2.2 years by slowing aging would save $7.1 trillion in disability and entitlement programs over 50 years.
According to apaper in Health Affairs co-authored by Olshansky, who is also a research associate at the University of Chicago’s Center on Aging.
Longevity scientists say the key to extending healthy life lies in focusing on aging itself rather than on aging-related diseases.
Even minor progress in slowing the aging process would be more groundbreaking than major progress that tackles just one illness, they say.
In 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 Dan Perry, founder of the Alliance for Aging Research, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
And while it is not yet clear whether humans will one day live 150 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 can’t be changed,” said Steven Austad, chair of the biology department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
All this stuff seemed like science fiction a few years ago, but now we have it, at least in mice.”
A personal approach
The idea for the facial recognition project came to Olshansky a couple of years ago during dinner with an insurance underwriter .
He was complaining that he had a very short time to assess people’s survival prospects” and that the methods used to do it were too blunt, Olshansky said.
Olshansky, whose work includes exploring 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.
He wondered whether that knowledge could translate into something more scientific.
He contacted Karl Ricanek, a professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Who has worked on facial recognition technology for the National Security Agency.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
The CIA, and the FBI; along with a biostatistician and other computer scientists, they developed a program to analyze photographs of faces.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
They have launched a Web site inviting anyone in the world to submit a photo.
The database they are developing, called Face My Age, is expected to deliver increasingly.
More accurate assessments and predictions as more people participate.
The researchers are hoping for large numbers of people — at least 10,000 or 20,000.
But preferably more to submit photos and basic biographical information in exchange for feedback.
On how quickly they are aging and what this means for their longevity prospects.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
The person in the photo cannot smile or have makeup on, and must reveal if he or she has had plastic surgery.
The technique is more personalized than the current approach to face aging.
“The technology that is out there utilizes group norms, so they can artificially age you,” Ricanek said.
But . . . the lines they paint on your face are actually the same as the lines they paint on my face, [whereas] the ones we’re using are individual.
Technology provide answer your face can reveal how long you’ll live?
Initially the site will deliver only one number — a person’s apparent age — but as it becomes more refined.
It should be able to estimate a date of death based on the face and assign a perceived age to different parts of the face, Olshansky said.
