199 Computer vision AI-based androgenetic alopecia analysis using a novel mobile web app

Introduction: Mobile digital health is developing rapidly and is expected to dominate how we inform, treat, and monitor skin and hair conditions. We tested the world’s first direct-to-consumer fully automated AI-based service app that uses image analysis to analyze the severity of androgenetic alopecia and monitor hair regrowth. Objectives: Compare the accuracy of a fully automated mobile, AI-based, mobile-hair loss analysis to hair loss assessment by a human dermatologist. Materials and Methods: We tested MDhair.co, an AI-based analysis system (MDalgorithms Inc., San Francisco, USA), on 30 females with androgenetic alopecia. The users answered a few questions about their hair loss and used their smartphones to take a selfie of their heads. Savin’s grading for women’s hair loss was used by a machine learning model of the AI-based system and the human dermatologist. The severity score generated by the MDhair analysis system was compared to a blinded assessment by a board-certified dermatologist. The data was collected and processed anonymously. Results: Data was collected from 30 women with a gradual development of hair loss compatible with female pattern androgenetic alopecia. The group included four women 18-29 years old, 13, 30-44, 12, 45-65, and one older than 65. Sixteen had straight hair, 10 had wavy hair, and 4 had curly hair. Based on human dermatologists assessing the hair loss severity, 17 had mild hair loss (Savin’s hair loss grades I-1 and I-2), and 13 had moderate hair loss (Savin’s hair loss grades II-1 and II-2). AI–based assessment matched the human dermatologist diagnosis in 28 of 30 cases (accuracy - 94%). 20% of the study participants underestimated the severity of their hair loss, and one overestimated the severity of hair loss. Conclusions: MDhair’s has been proven to be a valuable tool for assessing the severity of androgenetic alopecia. Our study has found that self-assessment resulted in a significant underestimation of hair loss. The automatic assessment by the MDhair system shows high accuracy in evaluating hair loss compared to a human dermatologist.