JLE

Epileptic Disorders

MENU

Pre-surgical epilepsy evaluation using 3T MRI. Do surface coils provide additional information? Volume 10, numéro 2, June 2008

Figure 1 13-year-old girl with right frontal lobe epilepsy (pat # 13 in table 1) and focal transmantle cortical dysplasia on MRI.A) 3T, coronal, T2-w FLAIR sequence shows right-sided, subcortical, hyperintensity extending radially towards the lateral ventricle (white circle).B) 3T, coronal, T1-w 3D GRE sequence confirms cortical abnormality (white circle) in the same region.C) 3T, head coil, coronal T1-w IR real image better depicts the cortical thickening and blurring of the cortical-white matter junction (arrow). Tissue with grey matter signal extends radially towards the lateral ventricle.D) Axial head coil, T1-w IR modulus image confirms the cortical thickening and blurring on the right side (white circle).E) The corresponding surface coil, T1-w, modulus image provides a few more details, but is noisier. Decreasing signal-to-noise ratio and thereby image quality with increasing distance from the surface coils.

Figure 2 51-year-old woman with right temporal lobe epilepsy (pat # 1 in table 1) and polymicrogyria in the right frontal and temporal lobes on MRI. A), B) Magnified, axial T1w IR modulus images obtained with head coil (A) and surface coils (B) show the slightly superior demarcation on the surface coil image.

Figure 3 28-year-old woman with partial epilepsy (pat # 4 in table 1) and a right parietal, subcortical (transmantle) heterotopia on MRI.A) 3T, T1-w IR modulus image shows the right-sided malformation (white circle).B) 3T, surface coil T1-w IR modulus image provides slightly better demarcation of subtle details in the right-sided, heterotopic grey matter. Decreasing signal-to-noise ratio at a distance from the surface coil with markedly deteriorated image quality in the inferior portion of the image.