Improved MR Brain Imaging Techniques Used to Find a Better Epilepsy Diagnosis

Using cutting edge, 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, researchers may have found a better approach to diagnosing epilepsy. In the process, the team was able to cure eight patients of all epileptic symptoms.

Epilepsy, a neurologic disorder causing repeated seizures or convulsions, affects about one percent of the population, according to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, MD, USA). The most common type of epilepsy is temporal lobe epilepsy, caused by scarring inside the hippocampus, a major memory center of the brain. Many of these patients have severe memory problems, even in between seizures.

Using 7-Tesla MRI technology, a University of Minnesota Medical School (U of M; Minneapolis, USA) research team led by neurologist Dr. Thomas Henry, scanned epileptic patients to capture very detailed images of their brain.

While most conventional clinical MRI machines have strength of 1.5 Tesla or 3 Tesla, 7-Tesla technology allowed researchers to make highly-improved, detailed images of patients’ brain tissue, particularly the portion responsible for causing epilepsy. The clearer MRI images allowed Dr. Henry and his colleagues to find scar tissue associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Accurately locating this scarring is vital because if medications fail to control epileptic seizures, it is frequently possible for neurosurgeons to remove scars from the brain in order to stop the seizures. The healthy regions of the brain left untouched, and actually begin to function better after seizures stop.

“There is huge potential here to improve patient care through improved approaches to magnetic resonance imaging,” Dr. Henry said. “When you see how much clearer these 7 Tesla images are, compared with standard MRI, it’s sort of like reading fine print with a magnifying glass versus the naked eye. The possibility of using 7 Tesla MRI to find brain lesions that were missed on current brain scans is likely to be very helpful in epilepsy and many other conditions.”

Dr. Henry and his team conducted their research in the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR), an interdisciplinary research laboratory that is home to the world’s strongest imaging magnets and most sensitive scanners. “Standard MRI technology is an effective way to diagnose epilepsy when it is caused by large lesions,” said Dr. Henry. “We believe that by using 7 Tesla machines, which we have right at our fingertips on the University of Minnesota campus, we’ll be able to treat a greater population of epileptic patients more effectively.”

The study was published in the online in August 2011 in the journal Radiology.

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University of Minnesota Medical School