High-resolution MRI developed to treat baldness

Men's Health Clinic Tokyo, which has a specialty outpatient clinic for treatment of androgenic alopecia (AGA) or male pattern baldness, has developed a technology to carry out an image-based diagnosis of AGA by using an ultra-high resolution scalp MRI.

The new technology enables doctors to observe a slight increase/decrease in the amount of hair and semi-automatically analyze and estimate the number of hairs and their thickness without shaving. With conventional photo shooting, it is difficult to detect a slight increase/decrease in the amount of hair, and shaving is necessary to analyze the number and thickness of hairs. As a result, only a small area of scalp can be examined.

In the case of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) for detecting brain cancers, etc, pathological changes of about 2-3mm can be detected. On the other hand, as a result of a joint research with Shigeyoshi Soga, who teaches radiology at National Defense Medical College, the resolution of the ultra-high resolution scalp MRI is about 15 times higher. The new MRI can take clear images of 200-300μm hair follicles (the structure of the root of hair).

Though Men's Health Clinic Tokyo did not disclose the measures taken to improve resolution, it said that a commonly-used MRI with a magnetic field strength of 3T (tesla) was employed. It developed an algorithm for semi-automatically analyzing the number and thickness of hairs based on MRI data in a joint research with Tatsuhiko Arafune, assistant professor at the Division of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University.

Men's Health Clinic Tokyo aims to commercialize the new MRI for objective evaluation in fiscal 2017 by increasing the number of experimenters and improving the accuracy of the analysis algorithm.

AGA can allegedly be cured or delayed through medication. For carrying out such treatment, the number and thickness of hairs need to be evaluated. Conventionally, objective evaluation methods that require shaving are not realistic in general treatment. On the other hand, in subjective evaluation, doctors tend to have different opinions from patients.

The new technology can be used for the evaluation of treatments. And Men's Health Clinic Tokyo plans to accumulate MRI data and use it for predicting the advancement of AGA and the effects of treatments in the future.

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