Neurosciences Research team recognized on cover of scientific journal
The Neurosciences Research team at Cook Children's Health Care System recently published a scientific article in Clinical Neurophysiology entitled, "Virtual Implantation using Conventional Scalp EEG Delineates Seizure Onset and Predicts Surgical Outcome in Children with Epilepsy." In this article, Cook Children's Director of Neurosciences Research, Christos Papadelis, Ph.D., along with his colleagues at Boston Children's Hospital and the University of Campus-Biomedico in Rome propose the development of an advanced neuroimaging method allowing the noninvasive localization of the seizure onset in children with drug resistant epilepsy based on low-density conventional electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. For children suffering from drug-resistant epilepsy, surgical treatment provides the highest opportunity to achieve seizure-freedom or a significant decrease in seizure frequency. To grant the best possible surgical outcome, the seizure onset, (i.e., the brain area where clinical seizures originate), should be identified and resected or ablated. The method proposed in this paper involves the estimation of "virtual sensors", which are able to noninvasively obtain similar information compared with intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings. Such a method may open up the possibility of using low-density EEG, which is available in every epilepsy center, for "foreseeing" later iEEG findings at various brain locations and using this information to decide where to implant the iEEG electrodes for more accurate delineation of the seizure onset zone. This research would significantly augment the presurgical evaluation of children with complex drug resistant epilepsy, and offer a boost in the presurgical workup of children with drug resistant epilepsy potentially improving outcomes of epilepsy surgery. Due to its significance, a figure from this paper was selected for the cover of the journal's issue by the Clinical Neurophysiology editor-in-chief.