Doctor Chaffoo Answers Questions And Talks About The Artas Hair Restoration Robot

As a plastic surgeon, i'm really fascinated with technology and in medicine and surgery. Robots have been around for decades and in the past 10 years a device has been developed called the artists and the artist is a robotic device that assists with hair restoration. We have the newest devices called the artist ix, and this device is remarkable in that it really extends what i can do in hair restoration in follicular unit excision for a patient. The process involves a robot, a robotic arm that has a small, very small punch, surrounded by a series of stereoscopic cameras and those cameras go in and scan the surface of the donor area, selecting the most perfect and ideal follicles for harvest during during the extraction process. The robot has built-in ai or artificial intelligence which allows the robot to innately, evaluate on a constant basis and give feedback to the computer system where there need to be changes in parameter of the punch or the direction or the angulation or even which areas to harvest. The other remarkable thing about the technology available with robotic hair restoration is that it has the ability to create the most random pattern possible, the robot's, very precise, it's very predictable and for repetitive processes that you would normally have to do hundreds, if not thousands of times Manually by hand in which there is a fatigue factor with the robot, there is no fatigue factor so essentially graph number one is identical to graph number one thousand two thousand and three thousand. We always examine and evaluate, are follicles under the microscope, and you can see that they're literally within microns of one another, so it's the the healthy quality of the grafts, the consistency for uh donor harvesting and creating that very random pattern. In addition, if there are areas where there is diminished density - or there is a scar, the robot knows to inherently skip those areas and go to areas where there is good density, in addition to the ability of the robot to harvest in such an effective manner. The rsix also has a capability of sight making in the frontal and the scalp region, where that becomes important is in a patient that has a mixed area of recipient sites. There may be some areas of very good hair. Some areas were called vellus hairs, which are not very good here that are in the process of miniaturization, and the robot is actually able to detect the difference between those and when the site is being made, we will avoid the good the terminal hairs to preserve those. Although a human can do that, well, we probably cannot do that as well or certainly not better than a robot can do that. There is also the capability of not only sight making but implantation of the graphs as well, so both from the perception of the donor area and the recipient area, the robotic technology has some tremendous technological advances. However, as i always tell patients, there will be certain cases due to the scalp the nature inherent nature of that patient's, hair, follicle or hair structure, where the robot may struggle or may not be the most ideal option. And so it's important to have all the technology available. That'S why we also have available the neograf, which is a an amazing device in and of itself. It'S also a fue, a method, a follicular unit, extraction method, but we use a small, tiny punch that we operate by hand. It allows the the operator to uh to quickly maneuver and alter the direction as needed for harvesting so oftentimes in in our patients. Cases we'll combine those two together, so we'll combine robot technology with a neograft, so it's both that robotic technology and that human artistic touch that can be brought to bear to get the best outcome. So in the end you know patients want more hair, but they want very natural, looking hair lines and more density, and i think now, with the technology that we have available, we can bring that to bear to get the patients the best aesthetic outcome possible. You