Artificial intelligence is taught to determine a person’s “real” age from an X-ray
Japanese researchers have taught artificial intelligence to determine a person’s age from an X-ray of their chest. They also believe that this ability will allow detecting potentially fatal diseases at an early stage, StudyFinds writes.
A group of scientists from Osaka University has developed an innovative artificial intelligence model for analyzing chest X-rays and accurately estimating a person’s chronological age. If AI makes a mistake, it can be a sign of a chronic or even fatal disease.
The study used more than 67 thousand people. X-rays of perfectly healthy people, who provided scientists with more than 36 thousand in the period from 2008 to 2021. volunteers. They became part of the knowledge base for training the artificial intelligence model. AI determined the true chronological age of a person with a correlation coefficient of 0.95. According to scientists, this is a very strong and good indicator.
However, the researchers did not stop there. They have additionally uploaded a little over 34 thousand to the training database. X-rays of people suffering from a number of common diseases. Over time, they noticed natural deviations in determining the age of patients with hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and elevated blood uric acid levels.
Simply put, the greater the difference between a person’s chronological age and the one determined by artificial intelligence, the more likely they are to suffer from at least one of these diseases. Thus, AI can use chest X-rays to display a person’s health status. According to the researchers, this will help in assessing the severity of chronic diseases, predicting life expectancy and possible surgical complications.
