ARTAS Hair Studio™ Preview
Regarding FUE hair transplantation, Dr. Bernstein describes the recipient site creation process in detail. He explains why, in FUE procedures, the recipient sites are created before the follicular unit grafts are extracted from the donor area. “Pre-making” recipient sites is a key improvement to the FUE procedure that Dr. Bernstein was the first to describe in medical literature. It is beneficial in several ways, the most important of which include reducing the overall time grafts are out of the body and creating a “fertile bed” for the follicular unit grafts. Both of these processes contribute to increased graft survival.
At the 2nd ARTAS User Group Meeting in February 2014, Dr. Bernstein introduced hardware and software technology by which the ARTAS Robotic System can create recipient sites in an FUE hair transplant. The addition of the recipient site creation capability to the robot, which until now was used solely to extract follicular units, brings the system closer to performing all critical aspects of a hair transplant procedure.
In using the updated ARTAS robot, the doctor takes photographs of the patient which are fed into the robot’s computer system. The ARTAS™ Hair Studio converts the photos into a 3-D model of the patient. This model can be manipulated and saved for use in the patient’s procedure. The physician then designs the recipient site incisions in order to create the most natural looking hair transplant. During the procedure, the robot uses its guidance technology to avoid existing hairs while creating up to 1,500 recipient sites per hour. The automation of recipient site creation improves a procedure that, with manual tools, can be physically demanding and prone to human error.
The recipient site creation capability will be available for the ARTAS Robotic Hair Transplant System in the fall of 2014.
The final step of a robotic hair transplant will be the automated insertion of follicular units into recipient sites created by the ARTAS. This step is likely 2 or more years away from use in a hair restoration clinic.
On the advancement, Dr. Bernstein said: “This development is a crucial step towards a robotic system that can perform every aspect of a hair transplant. A great deal of credit goes to the engineers of Restoration Robotics who have worked to make automated recipient site creation a reality. I am proud that this work not only improves hair transplants for patients, but adds to the increasingly important trend of using robotic technology in medicine.”
The ARTAS Robotic System, developed by Restoration Robotics, is currently in use by hair restoration physicians around the world to automate the extraction of grafts of skin and hair called follicular units.. Follicular units, which are natural groupings of one to four hair follicles, form the biological basis of the modern hair transplant procedure. Once extracted from the back of the patient’s scalp, the follicular unit grafts are then inserted into recipient sites in the balding area of the scalp where they grow hairs that are immune to the effects of common hair loss.
This is exciting news to the hair restoration industry and for patients interested in hair restoration.  For more information on Robotic Hair Restoration in the Texas area, please contact Dr. Mark Bishara’s office at (817) 473-2120 or visit our website at www.MarkBisharaMD.com.