ABSTRACT
To discover specific variants with relatively large effects on the human face, we have devised an approach to identifying facial features with high heritability. This is based on using twin data to estimate the additive genetic value of each point on a face, as provided by a 3D camera system. In addition, we have used the ethnic difference between East Asian and European faces as a further source of face genetic variation. We use principal components (PCs) analysis to provide a fine definition of the surface features of human faces around the eyes and of the profile, and chose upper and lower 10% extremes of the most heritable PCs for looking for genetic associations. Using this strategy for the analysis of 3D images of 1,832 unique volunteers from the well-characterized People of the British Isles study and 1,567 unique twin images from the TwinsUK cohort, together with genetic data for 500,000 SNPs, we have identified three specific genetic variants with notable effects on facial profiles and eyes.
Subject(s)
Cadherins/genetics , Face , Membrane Proteins/genetics , Proprotein Convertases/genetics , Serine Endopeptidases/genetics , Cadherin Related Proteins , Female , Humans , Male , Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide , Principal Component Analysis , Quantitative Trait, HeritableABSTRACT
A new, fast, statistically robust, exhaustive, translational image-matching technique is presented: fast robust correlation. Existing methods are either slow or non-robust, or rely on optimization. Fast robust correlation works by expressing a robust matching surface as a series of correlations. Speed is obtained by computing correlations in the frequency domain. Computational cost is analyzed and the method is shown to be fast. Speed is comparable to conventional correlation and, for large images, thousands of times faster than direct robust matching. Three experiments demonstrate the advantage of the technique over standard correlation.
