Deciding to have a hair transplant is a big life choice and understanding what the differences are between the procedure types is paramount. One of the popular “buzz words” in hair restoration today is “FUE hair transplant”. What is an FUE hair transplant exactly? What are the different kinds of FUE procedures, and how are they different? Here we will be discussing different types of FUE hair transplant procedures, including the ARTAS Robotic FUE hair transplant procedure.

ARTAS Robotic FUE vs. Manual FUE

At PAI Medical Group of Indiana (WeGrowHairIndy), we believe in staying up-to-date on the most advanced technology in hair restoration and offering the best hair transplant techniques available anywhere in the world. For these reasons, we invested in the most technologically advanced hair transplant procedure, the ARTAS Robotic FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction). FUE procedures are not something new to the market, but a majority of the procedures done throughout the world are manual handheld FUE procedures, like a NeoGraft device. A manual handheld FUE hair transplant is a procedure that is done by a physician using a handheld device to extract the individual hair follicles. Much of the success of this form of procedure is entirely as a result of the efficiency and experience of the Physician, to ensure that harvesting happens at a natural distance apart and that the hair follicle does not get transected during harvesting. Perfectly extracting 500 – 3,000 follicles by hand takes a steady hand and a tremendous amount of time.

In comparison, the ARTAS FUE hair transplant procedure is a physician guided robotic FUE hair transplant device. This simply states that the physician will be in control of the robot during the procedure by selecting the density amount desired for harvesting as well as mapping out the desired donor area. The physician does not actually harvest the donor grafts. The harvesting step is all completed by the ARTAS robot with unparalleled precision and accuracy. ARTAS does 3-D mapping of the patient’s scalp and hair follicles. This determines the follicle angle under the scalp and is able to do this by updating its positions during extraction 50 times per second, as well as calculating and mapping the distance between each follicle that has been harvested to ensure that the harvested area is not “over harvested”. This ensures the best possible result for the hair transplant recipient. See image below for ARTAS detailed mapping example: