We are pleased to announce that robotic FUE is now available at Bernstein Medical – Center for Hair Restoration. This is a major advance in FUE technology.

The ARTAS system for hair restoration allows us to more effectively isolate follicular unit grafts from the donor area of the scalp without causing damage to individual follicles, a problem that has been a limitation of manual FUE techniques. Many other important parts of the FUE procedure will still be performed by the physician and team. Read the full post for more details.

Q: Does the robot do the whole operation or does the doctor do any of it?

A: The ARTAS robot only performs a small part of the FUE procedure, although it is an important one. The robot performs the first step, the isolation of follicular units.

Read more details about how the doctor uses the robotic FUE system.

Q: What does the hair transplantation process do to your existing hair?

A: When we perform hair transplant surgery, we transplant into an area that is either bald or has some existing hair. The hair that is existing is undergoing a process called miniaturization. What this means is that the hairs are continuing to decrease in size – both in diameter and in length. When we perform a hair transplant, we don’t transplant around the existing miniaturized hair on your scalp, we transplant through it. And the reason why we do that is because the miniaturized hair, the fine hair that is being affected by DHT, is eventually going to disappear, so you don’t want there to be any gaps.

Click to read the entire post.

Q: With the ARTAS^™ robotic system, by Restoration Robotics, what part of the FUE hair transplant procedure can actually be done by the robot?

A: The ARTAS System is a computer guided method of harvesting follicular units in the donor area during FUE. The initial phase of FUE, where the follicles are selected, scored and separated from the surrounding scalp is done by the ARTAS System. All other phases of the procedure including; actual follicular unit graft removal from the scalp, hairline design, recipient site creation and placement of the grafts into the balding scalp are done by the surgical team.

In the near future, improvements in the ARTAS System should allow it to be able to actually extract the separated grafts from the scalp. Eventually, the engineers hope to be able to increase the capability of the system so that it can create recipient sites and implant the extracted grafts into them.

Q: How does the ARTAS^™ robotic system actually work?

A: The ARTAS System for Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) combines several features including an interactive, image-guided robotic arm, special imaging technologies, small skin punches of two different sizes, and a computer monitor. After the system is positioned over the patient’s donor area of the scalp, ARTAS is capable of identifying and isolating follicular units from the surrounding scalp.

After the robotic arm is aligned with the follicular unit, a sharp 1-mm punch is used to cut through the upper part of the skin (the epidermis and upper dermis).

Immediately following this, a duller, 1.3mm punch is used to separate the deeper part of the follicular unit from the remainder of the dermis and subcutaneous fat. Once separated by the robot, the follicular units are manually removed from the scalp and stored until they are implanted into the patient’s recipient area.