TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hamid, Celona
A1  - Maiworm, Michelle
A1  - Wagner, Marlies
A1  - Knake, Susanne
A1  - Nöth, Ulrike
A1  - Deichmann, Ralf
A1  - Gracien, René-Maxime
A1  - Seiler, Alexander
T1  - Focal epilepsy without overt epileptogenic lesions: no evidence of microstructural brain tissue damage in multi-parametric quantitative MRI
T2  - Frontiers in neurology
N2  - Background and purpose: In patients with epilepsies of structural origin, brain atrophy and pathological alterations of the tissue microstructure extending beyond the putative epileptogenic lesion have been reported. However, in patients without any evidence of epileptogenic lesions on diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), impairment of the brain microstructure has been scarcely elucidated. Using multiparametric quantitative (q) magnetic resonance imaging MRI, we aimed to investigate diffuse impairment of the microstructural tissue integrity in MRI-negative focal epilepsy patients.
Methods: 27 MRI-negative patients with focal epilepsy (mean age 33.1 ± 14.2 years) and 27 matched healthy control subjects underwent multiparametric qMRI including T1, T2, and PD mapping at 3 T. After tissue segmentation based on synthetic anatomies, mean qMRI parameter values were extracted from the cerebral cortex, the white matter (WM) and the deep gray matter (GM) and compared between patients and control subjects. Apart from calculating mean values for the qMRI parameters across the respective compartments, voxel-wise analyses were performed for each tissue class.
Results: There were no significant differences for mean values of quantitative T1, T2, and PD obtained from the cortex, the WM and the deep GM between the groups. Furthermore, the voxel-wise analyses did not reveal any clusters indicating significant differences between patients and control subjects for the qMRI parameters in the respective compartments.
Conclusions: Based on the employed methodology, no indication for an impairment of the cerebral microstructural tissue integrity in MRI-negative patients with focal epilepsy was found in this study. Further research will be necessary to identify relevant factors and mechanisms contributing to microstructural brain tissue damage in various subgroups of patients with epilepsy.
KW  - epilepsy
KW  - quantitative MRI
KW  - tissue microstructure
KW  - voxel-wise analyses
KW  - tissue segmentation
KW  - brain networks
Y1  - 2023
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/83651
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-836514
SN  - 1664-2295
VL  - 14
IS  - 1175971
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  -