Robotic hair harvesting system: a new proposal

Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2011;14(Pt 1):113-20. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-23623-5_15.

Abstract

Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) has become a popular hair transplanting method for solving male-pattern baldness problem. Manually harvesting hairs one by one, however, is a tedious and time-consuming job to doctors. We design an accurate hair harvesting robot with a novel and efficient end-effector which consists of one digital microscope and a punch device. The microscope is first employed to automatically localize target hairs and then guides the punch device for harvesting after shifting. The end-effector shows average bias and precision of 0.014 mm by virtue of a rotary guidance design for the motorized shifting mechanism.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alopecia / therapy*
  • Calibration
  • Equipment Design
  • Hair / transplantation*
  • Hair Follicle / surgery*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Materials Testing
  • Microscopy / methods
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Robotics*
  • Skin / pathology
  • Software
  • Surgery, Computer-Assisted / methods