Radiological identification of temporal lobe epilepsy using artificial intelligence: a feasibility study.

Journal: Brain communications
Published Date: Dec 8, 2021

Abstract

Temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with MRI findings reflecting underlying mesial temporal sclerosis. Identifying these MRI features is critical for the diagnosis and management of temporal lobe epilepsy. To date, this process relies on visual assessment by highly trained human experts (e.g. neuroradiologists, epileptologists). Artificial intelligence is increasingly recognized as a promising aid in the radiological evaluation of neurological diseases, yet its applications in temporal lobe epilepsy have been limited. Here, we applied a convolutional neural network to assess the classification accuracy of temporal lobe epilepsy based on structural MRI. We demonstrate that convoluted neural networks can achieve high accuracy in the identification of unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy cases even when the MRI had been originally interpreted as normal by experts. We show that accuracy can be potentiated by employing smoothed grey matter maps and a direct acyclic graphs approach. We further discuss the foundations for the development of computer-aided tools to assist with the diagnosis of epilepsy.

Authors

  • Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht
    Department of Neurology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.
  • Brent Munsell
    Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
  • Simon S Keller
    Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7BE, UK.
  • Daniel L Drane
    Department of Neurology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
  • Jens H Jensen
    Center for Biomedical Imaging, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.
  • M Vittoria Spampinato
    Department of Radiology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.
  • Nigel P Pedersen
    Department of Neurology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
  • Bernd Weber
    Institute of Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research, University of Bonn, Bonn 53113, Germany.
  • Ruben Kuzniecky
    Department of Neurology, Hofstra University/Northwell, New York, NY 10075, USA.
  • Carrie McDonald
    Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
  • Leonardo Bonilha
    Department of Neurology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.

Keywords

No keywords available for this article.

External Resources

Popular Topics
Recent Journals