Down syndrome detection based on facial features using a geometric descriptor

J Med Imaging (Bellingham). 2017 Oct;4(4):044008. doi: 10.1117/1.JMI.4.4.044008. Epub 2017 Dec 12.

Abstract

Down syndrome is one of the most common genetic disorders caused by chromosome abnormalities in humans. Among other physical characteristics, certain facial features are typically associated in people with Down syndrome. We investigate the problem of Down syndrome detection from a collection of face images. As the main contribution, a compact geometric descriptor is used to extract facial features from the images. Experiments are conducted on an available dataset to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methodology.

Keywords: Down syndrome; appearance descriptor; geometric descriptor; image analysis.