Validation of the subtraction of the ictal and interictal SPECTs aligned with magnetic resonance technique in the localization of the epileptogenic zone in patients with pharmacoresistant frontal lobe epilepsy

The surgical treatments for patients with intractable epilepsies has become more efficient with the evolution of diagnosis techniques. The surgery aims at rendering the patient free of seizures, without postoperative neurological deficits. In order to accomplish this, it is of major importance to precisely delineate the epileptogenic zone (EZ). The main exams the neurologists use in order to find the EZ in the pre-surgical evaluation are the scalp electro encephalography and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, in cases where the MRI doesn't show any lesion or there are conflicting data, functional imaging such as Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Positron Emission Tomography techniques play a crucial role. Ictal SPECT shows a snapshot of cerebral blood perfusion during the seizure, highlighting the most active areas during the ictus state and it has been shown this technique is useful in localizing the EZ in frontal lobe epilepsy cases. Sensitivity and specificity of ictal SPECT might be improved by a developed Computer Aided Diagnosis tool that subtracts the interictal SPECT image from the ictal one and coregisters the result with the MRI (SISCOM). In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the contribution of SISCOM to the pre-surgical evaluation in frontal lobe epilepsies. We considered for this study patients submitted to frontal lobe epilepsy surgery at our institution between 2007 and 2011 and with at least one ictal and one interictal SPECT. 14 patients were included and only 5 had a good outcome after the surgery. The ictal SPECT had a sensibility of 40% and specificity of 88,9% while the interictal SPECT showed a sensibility of 40% and a specificity of 66,7%. The sensitivity of the SISCOM tool was 60% and the specificity 88,9%.These results agree with the literature showing that SISCOM is the state-of-the-art in interpreting the ictal SPECT and has the potential to be used during pre surgical evaluation of patients being considered for surgical treatment of frontal lobe epilepsy. (author)