In Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray", the eponymous subject keeps his youthful looks while the vagaries of age are visited upon his portrait in the attic. Now, a digital version of Wilde's idea is being developed to show you what you will look like in five years' time if you take no exercise, eat too much junk food and drink too much alcohol! At Accenture Technology's labs in ;sophia Antipolis, near Nice in France, a flat-screen LCD TV linked to a set of cameras and a powerful image-processing computer replaces the portrait described in Wilde's novel. Initially, the system acts as a sophisticated "mirror" in which an image captured by a wireless camera is displayed in front of you, but that's just the start. Its main purpose is to conjure up a computer-modified image of the effects of over indulgence at the press of a button.
