Research: Diagnosing by facial features | Autism PDD

Today I ran across a Guardian article about some exciting new research at the Institute of Child Health in London.

Dr. Peter Hammond "used 3D digital photography to build a library of healthy children's faces and merged them to produce an "average" healthy face. He then travelled to hospitals around the world to take 3D images of children with various genetic disorders and from them created typical faces for each condition."

"Dr Hammond's team has now used the images to diagnose disorders in children. Doctors simply need to take 3D images of the child's face and use the computer to see which condition their facial features most closely resemble."

"The researchers are working on 30 different genetic conditions which alter the shape of the face." Among them are Williams syndrome, Smith Magenis, and Aspergers.

The problem is, you have to have a special camera, which is only available at 15 British hospitals (mostly maxillofacial centers that do facial surgery).

Here's the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/10/2

Sharlet has been photographed by one of the cameras for a study on just this topic. Also my husband and I and Nina.

Interesting!

Allegra...did they give you any insight on what they saw?

Fascinating... This goes along with some of our previous posts here about how our kids all look similar...

Thanks for sharing it!
Jeeze, at first I had a hard time beleiving it, but ya... sounds more and more likly a connection between facial features and genetic disorders. IDK, i mean... I always thought I looked like everybody else... must be really sutle differences. Im certainly not a computer, or 3D camera, but any pictures that ive seen on this board, everyone looks just fine to me, no real noticible differences. I really would like to know more, as far as what they are looking for specificly to what disorder that 'look' correlates with. I remember a similar post on this board not to long ago, but could not understand what any of the words meant, looking into a mirror, i could not see any abnormalities, but id love to know.

Very interesting...

Found more info on this research today:

"In work soon to be published, Professor Hammond has also used the software to examine the facial characteristics of people with autism spectrum disorder and has identified unusual facial asymmetry in children with the condition."

"These children are more likely to have a slight protrusion of the right temple, possibly reflecting a larger area of the brain known as the right frontal pole."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6982030.stm

"The British research, published on September 10, is also expected to allow doctors to screen children as young as two years old for autistic spectrum disorders, such as Asperger's syndrome, boosting their chances of receiving appropriate care and treatment as early as possible."

Source: http://www.autismconnect.org/news.asp?section=00010001&i temtype=news&id=6318

This was an old post from Norwaymom.

Today I ran across a Guardian article about some exciting new research at the Institute of Child Health in London.

"The researchers are working on 30 different genetic conditions which alter the shape of the face." Among them are Williams syndrome, Smith Magenis, and Aspergers.

The problem is, you have to have a special camera, which is only available at 15 British hospitals (mostly maxillofacial centers that do facial surgery).

Here's the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/10/2