Photoacoustic Imaging as a Tool for Assessing Hair Follicular Organization

October 2020 in “ Sensors ”

Ali Hariri, Colman Moore, Yash Mantri, Jesse V. Jokerst

photoacoustic imaging hair follicle density hair follicle orientation FUE FUT handheld transducer 3D images skin tracing method PAI follicular unit extraction follicular unit transplantation

Studysummary This study found that photoacoustic imaging can effectively measure follicle density and angles, even when follicles are not visible to the eye, providing a promising alternative to traditional photographic examination. Our plain-language summary of this paper — not a Tressless recommendation.

The study explored the effectiveness of photoacoustic imaging (PAI) in evaluating hair follicle density and orientation, which is crucial for hair transplant techniques like FUE and FUT. It found that PAI could detect hair follicles and measure their density and angles with high accuracy (R² = 0.96), even when the follicles were not visible to the naked eye. The technique involved using a handheld transducer to create 3D images and a skin tracing method to eliminate background noise. Although the study was limited to imaging a single healthy Caucasian male subject, the results indicated that PAI could be a valuable non-invasive tool for hair transplantation planning. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the NSF, and no conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.

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