Every diagram on this site, drawn from the cited literature rather than traced from a stock illustration. Each one is free to put on your own page, including commercially, as long as a visible link points back here. They follow your reader's light or dark theme.
Why we give them away: the good renderings of these — the Norwood scale especially — belong to clinics who use them to collect phone numbers. There should be a free, accurate one.
Publishing somewhere the credit line cannot go — a printed pack, inside an app, a textbook? Licensing.
Six heads seen from above, front at the top, each showing one pattern of alopecia areata: patchy, the most common at 70-80 percent of cases; alopecia totalis, the whole scalp, about 5 percent; alopecia universalis, the scalp and all body hair, about 1 percent; ophiasis, a band around the back and sides; sisaipho, the opposite, with the rim preserved and the centre lost; and diffuse alopecia areata, thinning everywhere with no patch to find. The guide's point is that the pattern predicts the response: patchy disease has the best outlook, ophiasis a poor one.
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Four markers, each drawn twice on one scale: the laboratory reference range the guides report, and the narrower range the hair literature points to. The shaded stretch of each reference bar is where a result can be reported as normal and still sit outside the hair range. Each row is quoted from a single guide, named on the row; where our guides disagree the ranges are printed, not merged.
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Testosterone becomes DHT at a single enzyme step with three isoenzymes; DHT then binds the androgen receptor in a genetically susceptible follicle, and the follicle miniaturises. Finasteride closes Type II, dutasteride closes all three, which is why lowering DHT slows the loss and why the two drugs lower it by different amounts.
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Two published comparisons on their own scales. Above, the meta-analysis mean difference in total hair count favouring dutasteride, drawn with its 95% confidence interval — the whole interval sits above zero, so the direction is settled and the size is not. Below, a head-to-head trial of dosing frequency in hairs per square centimetre. Efficacy only: both drugs carry the MHRA psychiatric warning, and dutasteride is not FDA-approved for hair loss.
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The published course of finasteride on a single linear month axis: DHT falls within a day, nothing is visible for three to six months, and results build to a maximum between twelve and twenty-four. The shaded stretch is the period in which the treatment is working and cannot be seen, which is when people stop. Proportions are of men in the cited studies, not a forecast for any individual.
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Both techniques move hair from the same donor area. FUT removes a single strip of scalp and dissects it into follicular units, leaving one linear scar; FUE punches units out individually, leaving scattered dot scars. No pooled analysis has shown a survival difference between them; the one systematic review of graft survival found 82.7% at 7-12 months, falling with time, regardless of technique.
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One follicle through anagen, catagen, telogen and exogen, with the published duration of each phase and the share of scalp hair sitting in each at any one moment. Shedding is the end of a cycle, not a failure of one.
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Three hairlines seen from above and in profile: the juvenile hairline of Norwood 1, the mature hairline of Norwood 2, which most men develop between 17 and 30 and which sits 1-2 cm behind the juvenile line, and the pronounced M of Norwood 3, the first stage the scale counts as balding. The difference between the second and third heads is the whole question; shaded areas are hair, pale areas are scalp.
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Female pattern hair loss seen from above. The centre part widens into a zone that broadens toward the front — the "Christmas tree" pattern — while the band of hair at the frontal hairline stays. Grades I, II and III are the same pattern at increasing severity: hair thins and scalp shows through it, rather than an area going bald.
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The same follicle over successive cycles under DHT: a shorter growing phase each time, and a shaft that comes back finer, shorter and less pigmented until it is vellus. Relative sizes are illustrative — the only quantity drawn to scale is the dashed line 20% below the terminal shaft, the diameter diversity trichoscopy looks for. Below it: where DHT comes from, where it binds, and the step the 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors block.
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Minoxidil shortens telogen and moves resting follicles back into growth, so the old club hairs — which had already finished growing — are pushed out as the new shafts come up. The curve shows the shape reported after starting: a rise, a peak, a fall, and a settling below where it began. The vertical axis carries no scale because no source states one.
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Each stage is drawn twice: the top of the head with the front at the top, and the profile facing left. Shaded areas are hair, pale areas are bare scalp. Stage 2 is usually a mature hairline rather than balding; Stage 3 is the first stage the scale counts as clinical balding. The Type A variant recedes uniformly from front to back instead of leaving an island of hair in the middle, and shows no separate crown loss.
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The meta-analysis mean difference in hair density between oral and topical minoxidil, drawn with its 95% confidence interval. The interval straddles zero, so no difference was detected, and it is wide enough that a modest one could not have been either. Compare the dutasteride plate, where the whole interval sits above zero. What separates these two is route, availability and side effects, in the panel below.
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Pregnancy holds hairs in the growth phase; after delivery they shift to resting together and shed a few months later, all at once. The guide reports shedding beginning at 2.9 months on average, peaking at 5.1 and resolving at 8.1, with cosmetically significant regrowth by 12-18 months. The bars are the ranges reported, the dots the averages; the curve between the marked points is schematic. The guide reports the course as usually self-limiting.
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The randomised evidence for scalp cooling during chemotherapy, on two scales. Above, the proportion of women meeting the hair-preservation endpoint in the SCALP trial, with its confidence interval, against none of the controls. Below, the pooled relative risk of major hair loss from ten trials, where 1 is no effect. The footer carries the question the trials have not settled. This is the one decision on this site with a deadline: it can only be chosen before treatment starts.
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Two scalp cross-sections. Where the alopecia is non-scarring the follicle survives and its opening at the surface stays visible, so regrowth remains possible; where it is scarring (cicatricial) fibrous tissue has replaced the follicle, the opening is gone, and that loss is permanent. Which of the two a scalp shows is settled by examination and trichoscopy, not from a diagram.
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The published course of acute telogen effluvium on a single linear month axis: the trigger, the lag while the affected hairs sit in telogen, the shedding window, then regrowth and full cosmetic recovery. The arrow marks the gap that makes the cause hard to find. This is the typical course reported in the literature, not a prediction for any individual.
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Two range charts from the cost guide. Above, the price per graft: FUE $4-$10, FUT $2-$6. Below, the total cost of a procedure by Norwood stage, with the graft count each stage typically needs printed on its bar — from $6,000-$15,000 for 1,000-1,500 grafts at stage 2 to $24,000-$60,000 and more for 4,000-6,000 grafts at stages 6 and 7. These are the guide's published ranges, not a clinic's prices; the ranges widen faster than they rise.
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