Guiding iEEG electrode placement to improve surgical outcome of patients with epilepsy

Patients with epilepsy may have intracranial EEG (iEEG) electrodes implanted if initial non-invasive tests were unable to localise the seizure origin. However, not all brain regions can be implanted with iEEG electrodes, so a subset of regions must be chosen for implantation and monitoring ahead of the surgery. Unfortunately, the surgery does not make all patients seizure free. This suggests that either the wrong regions were chosen for implantation, or the wrong (or incomplete) regions were removed during surgery.

In this talk, I will describe my recent work investigating whether iEEG electrode placement can be guided using diffusion-weighted imaging. In particular, I will aim to answer whether we are (a) looking in the correct place, and (b) removing the correct regions. Finally, I will explain how this work could be used to improve the surgical outcome of epilepsy patients.