Cambridge Team Pioneers MRI Breakthrough to Perform Groundbreaking Epilepsy Surgery for Adults
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A new technique has enabled ultra-powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to identify tiny differences in patients' brains that cause treatment-resistant epilepsy. In the first study to use this approach, it has allowed doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, to offer the patients surgery to cure their condition.
Previously, 7T MRI scanners – so called because they operate using a 7 Tesla magnetic field, more than double the strength of previous 3T scanners – have suffered from signal blackspots in crucial parts of the brain. But in research published today in Epilepsia, researchers in Cambridge and Paris have used a technique that overcomes this problem.
Around 360,000 people in the UK have a condition known as focal epilepsy, which causes seizures to spread from part of the brain. A third of these individuals have persistent seizures despite medication, and the only treatment that can cure their condition is surgery. Epileptic seizures are the sixth most common reason for hospital admission.
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