Italian polymath Giovanni Battista della Porta (1535–1615) presented the case for physiognomy with detailed illustrations in his work De Humana Physionognomia (1586). Porta’s book helped popularize physiognomy in the 16th century.
In Physiognomica Aristotelis commentii, Camillo Baldi and Geronimo Tamburini, 1621
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Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso measured the facial and bodily attributes of thousands of convicts over his career, attempting to prove scientifically that there was a criminal “look.”
From Criminal man, according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso 1911
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Facial character chart from New physiognomy, or, Signs of character, as manifested through temperament and external forms, and especially in "the human face divine," ca. 1894
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Today’s biometric technologies reference databases of personal information to identify people and limit access to sensitive information and restricted places. They’re used in law enforcement and border security, as well as everyday life.
Types of biometric identification, 2023
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Artificial intelligence and computer vision analyze visual material to help understand and diagnose illnesses. National Library of Medicine research has advanced techniques to help predict and spot health conditions using these technologies.
A heart ultrasound from “Real-time echocardiography image analysis and quantification of cardiac indices,” Medical Image Analysis, 2022
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