fig11

Figure 11. Demonstration of improved hair follicle productivity in male pattern hair loss during combined oral and topical drug treatment. Figure 11A1-A3 provides detailed views generated by our phototrichogram method. The image appearing in Figure 11A1 was captured immediately after clipping and Figure 11A2 shows the same site 48 h later. The perfect overlay of Figure 11A2 on Figure 11A1 in Figure 11A3 is ready for Computer-Assisted Image Analysis after technicians used a panel of colours that have no specific meaning in terms of growth rate or diameter at this stage. The novel method introduced specific colour codes for identifying growing hair to be dot-mapped. Accordingly, “growth” is shown for the thinnest diameters [Figure 11B; magenta; 20-30 µm], intermediate [Figure 11C; blue; 40-50 µm] and terminal hair fibres [Figure 11D; green; 60-70 µm]. We planned yellow as colour code for growing hair with a diameter exceeding 80 µm, but no such hair was present at baseline. The second innovation appears as grey dots as the background. This procedure exhaustively identified follicular openings to allow a precise description of hair productivity per follicular unit (FU). By back and forth examination through all images from d-8 to d90, we found 93 FU mapped in Figure 11D [follicular unit dots (FUD)]. All FUD were numbered for creating a repertoire during the longitudinal study [larger and paler dots in Figure 11D]. Typically, at this baseline session, we detected five growing terminal hair pertaining to FUDs 5, 28, 50, 62 and 66.