How to Measure Facial Temperature for Early Diagnosis of Metabolic Diseases

A study published this week in the journal Cell Metabolism shows how measuring the temperature of different areas of the face could help in the early detection of diseases associated with biological aging.

These temperature differences are not easily sensed by touch and must be identified using spatial temperature patterns, which requires a thermal imaging camera and an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained on empirical data.

“Aging is a natural process,” says Jing-Dong Jackie Han, lead author of the study from Peking University. “But our tool could promote healthy aging and help people live disease-free lives.”

Previously, researchers used 3D facial structure to predict people’s biological age, which indicates the degree of aging of the body. This factor is closely linked to the risk of developing chronic diseases.

Scientists were curious to see whether other facial features, such as temperature, could also predict the rate of aging and health.

Thermal clock

Data from this new study, which analyzed facial temperatures from more than 2,800 participants aged 21 to 88, was used to train machine learning artificial intelligence models that can predict a person’s thermal age.

“Due to the limited number of samples, we do not use deep learning models to predict metabolic diseases. Instead, we use machine learning based on a thermal clock we called ThermoFac, which we developed based on 2,800 scanned facial images,” explains Han at SINC.

Researchers have identified several key areas of the face whose temperature is significantly associated with age and health, including the nose, eyes and cheeks.

The team found that the temperature of the nose decreased more quickly with age than the temperature of other parts of the face, meaning that people with hotter noses have younger thermal ages. Meanwhile, the temperature around the eyes tends to increase with age.

They also noticed that people with metabolic disorders such as diabetes and fatty liver disease had faster thermal aging. These participants had higher eye temperatures than their healthy peers of the same age. People with high blood pressure also had higher cheek temperatures.

Analysis of blood samples from the volunteers also showed that the increase in temperature around the eyes and cheeks was mainly due to an increase in cellular activity associated with inflammation, such as repairing damaged DNA and fighting infections.

“Deterioration of biological conditions by altering normal cellular function and energy homeostasis can lead to the development or progression of chronic diseases,” the SINC author reports. “The thermal clock is so closely associated with chronic diseases that previous facial imaging models could not predict these conditions.”

Benefits of Exercise

The association between thermal conditions and age-related diseases prompted the authors to investigate whether exercise could influence thermal age.

They asked 23 participants to jump rope at least 800 times a day for two weeks. To the team’s surprise, these people reduced their thermal age by five years in just two weeks of training.

The researchers now want to find out whether thermal facial imaging can be used to predict other conditions, such as sleep disorders or cardiovascular problems.

“We hope to apply facial thermal imaging in clinical settings as it has great potential for early disease diagnosis and early intervention,” concludes Khan.

Link:

Zhengqing Yu et al., “Facial Thermal Image Analysis Reveals Quantitative Signatures of Aging and Metabolic Diseases.” Cell Metabolism (2024)