There is a great need to diagnose in an early way the diseases that children may suffer, an early diagnosis translates into many benefits, act adequately against an illness, minimize its consequences obtaining a better quality of life, etc.
This is one of the reasons why an investigation is being carried out that allows, Through the analysis of the facial features of a child, determine what is the genetic disease that can suffer, in this way, the face becomes the mirror of what can be a disease.
The revolutionary system allows, in addition to making an early diagnosis, a great economic saving, since it avoids the performance of some genetic tests that are expensive. Thanks to the software designed for this purpose, digital photographs can be taken in three dimensions that are subsequently compared with those presented by the database (numerous facial features associated with certain genetic diseases are contemplated), after the comparison, you can obtain a diagnosis of the possible genetic disorder suffered by a child.
At the moment the researchers focus their work on 30 genetic diseases that alter the face, although it is expected to increase the database and classify many more diseases. The so-called "face of the genetic disorder" has been obtained from the 25,000 points captured from the image of a face. One of those responsible for the new system, Dr. Peter Hammond, has traveled to different hospitals around the world to feed this database with three-dimensional facial images of children with genetic disorders, in the same way, another base has been created of data with the face of healthy children, contrasting both the diagnosis is achieved.
Anyway, although it is a fairly reliable system, it must be said that it does not reach 100% accuracy on the diagnoses, so, in Williams syndrome you get 98% of hits, 92% in cases of fragile X syndrome, 91% in cases of Smith Magenis, etc. It will not take long for the system to be perfected until 100% efficiency is achieved, surely the percentage will increase as the information in the database increases.
