By Jeong Yun Seo WIRED Korea

For better looks, many people with thinning hair choose to apply medicated shampoo, take oral medicine or have locks transplanted. For those who wish to have a fuller head of hair with transplanting, here’s good news.

A Korean research team has developed a follicle transplanter that can help reduce the surgical time up to 50 percent. The team expects the hair-transplanting cost to drop sharply.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute has recently announced that Kim Kyu-hyung, director of the Medical IT Convergence Section, developed a device that could plant follicles 30 percent to 50 percent faster than a conventional follicle planter.

Kim developed the device in collaboration with Kyungpook National University’s hair transplanting center and Odae Metal Co., a Daegu-based manufacturer of precision components and parts.

The new device, equipped with a rotating cylinder containing 10 needles, is capable of extracting and planting 10 follicles at a time. The conventional hair-grafting device has one needle.

Hair grafting is a time-consuming procedure. A surgeon takes one follicle from the back of the scalp of the patient and plant it in a bald area at a time. During one visit by the patient, the surgeon usually transplants 2,000 to 3,000 follicles.

The team, which conducted eight clinical trials, found no defects or safety problems. Odae Metal obtained a certificate of Good Manufacturing Practice from the Korea Food and Drug Administration and registered with the government agency as a manufacturer of the medical equipment. It also completed the process of obtaining a certificate of safety from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company said.

“A surgical operation usually takes two to three hours. But the time is now reduced to one hour and a half (with use of the new device),” A hair-grafting surgeon of Kyungpook National University Hospital was quoted as saying. “I feel less tired, and the patient has less physical tension.”

The above is a translation of Jeong Yun Seo’s Korean-language article by Nam-hyun Choi, deputy editor in chief at WIRED Korea.