By Connie Chang
Your biological age reflects your physical health and can differ from your actual age by years. A new tool that calculates that number “could be a wake-up call.”A picture is worth a thousand words. But when that picture is a high-precision 3D image of the face, it might be worth a thousand blood tests as well. That’s because those full cheeks and under-eye bags are not just unsightly harbingers of age, but also a reflection of our health.
Scientists have known for decades that chronological age—a number that can be gleaned from our driver’s license-–doesn’t tell the whole story. Our so-called biological age, influenced by everything from our environment to diet and exercise habits, reflects the health of our cells and organs and can differ from chronological age by years. But unlike tracking the time we’ve been alive, biological age is more slippery to pinpoint. Now Jing-Dong (Jackie) Han and colleagues have developed an AI-driven process, dubbed a facial aging clock, that takes a 3D image of a person’s face and calculates their biological age.
Editorial
