Cliniface assists with medical diagnosis, patient screening, treatment monitoring, clinical trials, and surgical planning through an objective, transparent, and unobtrusive analysis using 3D facial imaging and the most up-to-date statistics about variation in facial size and shape.
Cliniface incorporates novel visualisation and analysis techniques within an open source and interoperable desktop application. The software automatically measures, detects, and classifies atypical facial traits referencing through to standard terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology allowing non-experts to undertake a preliminary analysis of the facial form, with the ability to export results in simple plain text formats for use within other platforms - integrating 3D facial analysis for enhanced clinical utility.
The development of the Cliniface platform is an ongoing collaboration across a range of different industry, government, and not-for-profit organisations.
A Clinical Platform for 3D Facial Analysis
Faces provide clues about an individual’s condition through subtle variations in facial features (facial phenotypes). These variations are part of the spectrum of who we are as individuals. One third of rare diseases have facial clues and identifying these can aid diagnosis. Sometimes these patterns can also be monitored to investigate treatment response, be that for a drug or for a surgery. Another example of unlocking facial clues is that sometimes, but not always, exposure to alcohol in the womb manifests as subtle facial variations.
Diagnosing patients with syndromes/rare diseases using facial phenotyping can be very challenging and requires a high level of expertise and experience. Because rare conditions are individually uncommon and the patterns are often very subtle, they can go unrecognised. 3D facial analysis offers a precise and objective method of highlighting the clinically salient aspects of facial variation to help clinicians in making earlier and accurate diagnoses. Cliniface and innovation in 3D facial imaging is supporting improvements in rare diseases diagnosis.
Cliniface performs its analysis using 3D facial images/photos as input. 3D images are different to normal 2D photographs in that they represent the full spatial geometry of the patient’s face including size information about facial features which is needed to compare measurements against previously acquired statistics.
Camera systems which produce 3D images are commercially available. The images generated by these systems can be imported into Cliniface for visualisation and analysis. There are several different 3D camera systems to choose from, but two systems that have been used by the team are highlighted below.
The Vectra H2 camera is a handheld DSLR camera with a customised lens. With this system, the user captures three separate images which are then stitched together by the camera’s software to generate the 3D facial model. The subject must remain still while the three images are taken which can be challenging for younger children.
The 3dMD system generates a 3D facial image by taking a snapshot of the face from two (or more) different camera angles simultaneously. This is advantageous for younger children who may have difficulty remaining still. Some 3dMD systems are fixed in place while others can be transported but in either case the system must be calibrated when setup. Typically, this means that patients must be able to travel to the system’s location.
Cliniface’s analysis depends upon the precision of the 3D image generated by the camera system used to capture the patient’s face. Cliniface is not affiliated with any particular 3D camera system vendor.
