Intelligent, Adaptive, and Multimodal Data-Driven Epileptogenic Zone Identification and Cognitive Function Mapping Platform
An estimated 1.2M Americans suffer from epilepsy, and globally the number of such patients is around 1% of the population. Approximately 30% of such patients – hence around 25M people globally– suffer from epileptic seizures that do not respond to drugs. Treatment of such drug-resistant patients remains a very challenging task. There is more hope for around 60% of such patients (or around 15M people globally) who suffer from focal seizures, also known as partial seizures, which originate in just one part of the brain, and then spread across to other regions causing observable seizures. The thesis is that once the epileptogenic tissues (that cause seizures to nucleate) are localized, then they can be treated in at least two different ways: (i) electrodes are implanted in the brain to conduct stimulation (intervention) at or near the locations with epileptogenic tissues to control or stop seizures before they spread, or (ii) when the associated regions would not lead to severe cognitive impairment, those regions can be resected via surgery, potentially leading to post-surgery seizure freedom. Both procedures involve considerable risks. For example, electrodes might get infected or become isolated by localized inflammations, leading to a loss of intervention capability. Similarly, resection can unintentionally remove tissues that are cognitively important, leading to severe disabilities.
The key necessary step in any such treatment procedure is twofold: (i) High precision localization of epileptogenic tissues in the brain, and (ii) precise determination of the cognitive functionalities of such brain regions.
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