S6 NON-INVASIVE METHODS: TRICHOSCAN – WHAT’S NEW?
Hoffmann R
Dermaticum, Practice for Dermatology, Freiburg i. B., Germany

The treatment of androgenetic alopecia is usually long lasting and the effects of treatment attempts are difficult to measure. Consequently, there was a need for a sensitive tool to monitor hair loss and treatment response. Therefore, we developed the TrichoScan as a method which combines epiluminescence microscopy (ELM) with automatic digital image analysis for the measurement of human hair. The TrichoScan is able to analyze all important parameters of hair growth with an intraclass correlation of approx. 91% within the same TrichoScan operator and an intraclass correlation of approx. 97% for different TrichoScan operators. The application of the technique is demonstrated by comparison of the hair parameters in 9 men with frontal balding, which were treated for 6 months with 5% minoxidil. Even in this small cohort of patients we noticed after 3 months of treatment compared to baseline a significant increase of hair density (+ 21,32 hairs /cm2); p = 0,4696, cumulative hair thickness (+ 0,61 mm; p = 0,00843) and after 6 months significant increase of hair density (+ 33,98 hairs /cm2; p = 0,01129) and cumulative hair thickness (+ 0,88 mm; p = 0,00988). The advantage of the TrichoScan is that it can be used for clinical studies to compare placebo versus treatment 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. The drawbacks, however, are that the TrichoScan still needs a hair dye for contrast enhancement and the measurement area must be clipped before analysis. This mini-review summarizes recent attempts to optimize the technique.