Virtual Brain Simulates Epileptic Seizures to Aid Surgery Outcomes

A team of researchers has developed a virtual brain that simulates epileptic seizures to identify areas for surgery to increase the success of these operations.

The design is intended to help patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, who often need surgery to remove parts of the brain that cause seizures – a surgery with a continually low success rate.

The team from the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes in Marseilles created what they call a virtual epileptic patient (VEP) that uses MR imaging and electrical brain activity recordings to create a map of a patient’s “epileptogenic zone networks” (EZNs).

“[Our] workflow uses personalized brain models and machine learning methods to estimate EZNs and to aid surgical strategies,” the team said. “The structural scaffold of the patient-specific whole-brain network model is constructed from anatomical T1 and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Each network node is equipped with a mathematical dynamical model to simulate seizure activity.”

The digital brain can be adapted to a patient’s specific MRI readings, allowing researchers to identify and predict possible seizure sites and predict the outcomes of different surgeries.

The design is now part of a clinical trial involving 356 patients from 11 epilepsy centers in France.