Improved Autism Spectrum Disorder Detection Using Euclidean-Distance Facial Landmark Features to Enhance Classification Accuracy and Stability with Cross-Validation
TL;DR
Findings indicate that geometric feature extraction based on facial landmark distances is effective for ASD detection and has strong potential to be developed as an objective, interpretable, and efficient early screening tool using children’s facial images.
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects communication skills, social interaction, and behavioral patterns. Early detection is essential for timely intervention; however, conventional diagnostic methods remain time-consuming and subjective, as they rely heavily on clinical observations and expert judgment. This limitation highlights the need for an automated and objective approach to support early ASD screening. This study aims to analyze the performance, stability, and generalization of ASD classification using geometric features extracted from distances between facial landmarks. By representing facial morphology in terms of quantitative spatial relationships, this approach provides a more interpretable alternative to raw image-based methods. This study contributes by proposing a geometric feature representation based on facial landmark distances, providing a comparative analysis between linear and nonlinear classifiers, and ensuring robust evaluation through cross-validation. The dataset consists of 2,032 facial images, evenly distributed between children with ASD and those with typical development. A total of 68 facial landmark points were detected and used to compute pairwise Euclidean distances as classification features. Two classification algorithms, Logistic Regression and Extra Trees Classifier, were evaluated using 5-fold cross-validation to ensure reliable and unbiased performance estimation. The results show that Logistic Regression achieved an average accuracy of 89.91%, precision of 91.04%, recall of 88.56%, and F1-score of 89.76%. Meanwhile, the Extra Trees Classifier outperformed the linear model, achieving an average accuracy of 91.88%, precision of 92.69%, recall of 90.89%, and F1-score of 91.77%. Overall, both models demonstrated stable and consistent performance across validation folds, with the Extra Trees Classifier showing superior ability to capture nonlinear patterns in the data. These findings indicate that geometric feature extraction based on facial landmark distances is effective for ASD detection and has strong potential to be developed as an objective, interpretable, and efficient early screening tool using children’s facial images.