L-23   TRICHOSCAN: NEW DATA AND NEW FEATURES

R. Hoffmann. Dept.of Dermatology, Philipp University, Marburg, Germany.

Hair loss or hair thinning is a common complaint and the effects of treatment attempts are hard to measure. Consequently, there was a need for a sensitive tool to monitor hair loss and treatment response. Such a method should have been able to analyze the biological parameters of hair growth, which are: 1: hair density (n/cm2), 2: hair diameter (µm), 3: hair growth rate (mm/day) and 4: anagen/telogen ratio. Recently we have developed the TrichoScan as a method which combines epiluminescence (skin) microscopy (ELM) with automatic digital image analysis for the measurement of human, and potentially animal hair, in situ. The TrichoScan is able to analyze all biological parameters of hair growth with a so called intraclass correlation of approx. 91% within the same TrichoScan operator and an interclass correlation of approx. 97% for different TrichoScan operators. So far we were able to analyze hair number, density and thickness. However, we have now developed the TrichoScan further to analyze the vellus (hairs <40 µm) and terminal hair (hairs >40 µm) density and in addition hair diameter diversity. In summary, the results we will present show that the TrichoScan is able to measure all impornat parameters of hair growth and significant changes of can be observed even after 6 months of treatment and in a rather small group of probands. Therefore, the TrichoScan can be used for clinical studies for all hair colors to compare placebo versus active drugs or to compare different capacities of different hair growth promoting substances. It can be used for studying AGA or other forms of diffuse hair loss, and it can be adopted to study the effect of drugs or laser treatment on hypertrichosis or hirsutism.