Application of MRF in Epilepsy

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological network disorder, affecting over 3.4 million people in the US, 50 million people worldwide. Patients with epilepsy have recurrent spontaneous seizures. More than 30% of patients do not respond to medications for seizure control but could be cured by surgery. Presurgical evaluation of epilepsy strongly relies on diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results. In particular, surgical planning needs accurate visualization and detection of subtle lesions. In cases where exist multiple and widespread lesion, characterization of each lesion to identify the epileptic zone is essential.
Current epilepsy diagnosis relies on conventional qualitative MR images. However, conventional MRI is time consuming and its qualitative nature of conventional MRI makes it far from reaching above expectations due to its lack of sensitivity, specificity, repeatability, and reproducibility. 50% of the epilepsy patients received a diagnosis of “negative MRI” with conventional protocols. This population often require further invasive intracranial EGG (ICEEG); they usually have worse surgery outcome than MRI-positive patients as well.
Over the past year, magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) has been proposed as an alternative MR method for epilepsy. MRF is a state-of-the-art quantitative MR technique that could measure multiple tissue properties within clinically feasible time. In MRF implementation, all scan variables in a MR pulse sequence for data acquisition are varied simultaneously. In consequence, the acquired signals could encode multiple tissue parameters, such as T1, T2 and diffusion. Quantitative MR can produce repeatable and reproducible results for longitudinal studies. This particular fast quantitative MR strategy in addition enables comprehensive and objective analysis across multiple parameters. It has been proven to provide additional and comprehensive clinically relevant information as compared to conventional MRI for epilepsy patients.