Diagnostically relevant facial gestalt information from ordinary photos

Autor: Christoffer Nellåker, Julia Steinberg, Chris P. Ponting, David R. FitzPatrick, Caleb Webber, Andrew Zisserman, Quentin R. V. Ferry
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
medicine.medical_specialty
phenotyping
Databases
Factual

QH301-705.5
Science
Context (language use)
Disease
Space (commercial competition)
Biology
computer.software_genre
Bioinformatics
General Biochemistry
Genetics and Molecular Biology

computer vision
03 medical and health sciences
computational biology
Artificial Intelligence
medicine
Humans
Medical diagnosis
Biology (General)
Human Biology and Medicine
Cluster analysis
030304 developmental biology
0303 health sciences
General Immunology and Microbiology
business.industry
General Neuroscience
030305 genetics & heredity
General Medicine
3. Good health
Phenotype
Face
Medical genetics
Gestalt psychology
Medicine
Identification (biology)
Artificial intelligence
business
computer
Algorithms
Natural language processing
clinical genetics
Research Article
Human
Zdroj: eLife, Vol 3 (2014)
eLife
ISSN: 2050-084X
Popis: Craniofacial characteristics are highly informative for clinical geneticists when diagnosing genetic diseases. As a first step towards the high-throughput diagnosis of ultra-rare developmental diseases we introduce an automatic approach that implements recent developments in computer vision. This algorithm extracts phenotypic information from ordinary non-clinical photographs and, using machine learning, models human facial dysmorphisms in a multidimensional 'Clinical Face Phenotype Space'. The space locates patients in the context of known syndromes and thereby facilitates the generation of diagnostic hypotheses. Consequently, the approach will aid clinicians by greatly narrowing (by 27.6-fold) the search space of potential diagnoses for patients with suspected developmental disorders. Furthermore, this Clinical Face Phenotype Space allows the clustering of patients by phenotype even when no known syndrome diagnosis exists, thereby aiding disease identification. We demonstrate that this approach provides a novel method for inferring causative genetic variants from clinical sequencing data through functional genetic pathway comparisons. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02020.001
eLife digest Rare genetic disorders affect around 8% of people, many of whom live with symptoms that greatly reduce their quality of life. Genetic diagnoses can provide doctors with information that cannot be obtained by assessing clinical symptoms, and this allows them to select more suitable treatments for patients. However, only a minority of patients currently receive a genetic diagnosis. Alterations in the face and skull are present in 30–40% of genetic disorders, and these alterations can help doctors to identify certain disorders, such as Down’s syndrome or Fragile X. Extending this approach, Ferry et al. trained a computer-based model to identify the patterns of facial abnormalities associated with different genetic disorders. The model compares data extracted from a photograph of the patient’s face with data on the facial characteristics of 91 disorders, and then provides a list of the most likely diagnoses for that individual. The model used 36 points to describe the space, including 7 for the jaw, 6 for the mouth, 7 for the nose, 8 for the eyes and 8 for the brow. This approach of Ferry et al. has three advantages. First, it provides clinicians with information that can aid their diagnosis of a rare genetic disorder. Second, it can narrow down the range of possible disorders for patients who have the same ultra-rare disorder, even if that disorder is currently unknown. Third, it can identify groups of patients who can have their genomes sequenced in order to identify the genetic variants that are associated with specific disorders. The work by Ferry et al. lays out the basic principles for automated approaches to analyze the shape of the face and skull. The next challenge is to integrate photos with genetic data for use in clinical settings. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02020.002
Databáze: OpenAIRE