1st ILAE-YES Course on Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques in Epilepsy

Online

1 June - 10 August 2023

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become an essential tool during the diagnostic process of patients with epilepsy due to its ability to help clinicians identify structural lesions. Furthermore, patients with these structural lesions have an increased chance of seizure freedom after epilepsy surgery. Nevertheless, not all patients have visible lesions on MRI, and new techniques have been developed to help clinicians discover ‘occult lesions’.

On the other hand, multimodal neuroimaging is essential during presurgical evaluation, and now several centres have access to positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), functional MRI (fMRI) and EEG source imaging (ESI).

During this hands-on course, we will stress the importance of appropriate protocols in MRI acquisition (HARNESS protocol) and why clinicians should use and analyze all the sequences. Also, we will go through different approaches in advanced MRI analysis to identify focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) and other lesions. Finally, we will learn to process and analyze quantitative PET, SPECT and ESI as advanced multimodal techniques (see the course program).

Methodology

  1. Experts will provide recorded lectures and tutorials. Lectures will be available one week before the Live Q&A session.
  2. Before the live Q&A session, participants should run the pipeline using their data.
  3. Live Q&A will be held every Thursday from 17:00 to 18:00 CET to solve remaining questions and discuss a particular case.
  4. A public Google document will allowparticipants to post questions during the course.

After the course, all lectures will be available on the ILAE-YES YouTube channel.

Topics

  • Why multimodal imaging in epilepsy?
  • The importance of appropriate neuroimaging protocols: The HARNESS protocol
  • Basic understanding of neuroimaging data: formats, terminology, nomenclature, scripting, GUIs
  • Voxel and surface-based morphometry in MRI using FreeSurfer
  • Voxel and surface-based morphometry in MRI using SPM
  • Detecting FCD using the MELD pipeline
  • Detecting FCD using NOEL FCD texture pipeline
  • ESI using Brainstorm
  • Quantitative PET
  • SPECT
  • Localising the EZ using EEG/fMRI

Application & Registration

All Young Epilepsy Section (YES) members are welcome to apply. Please submit a short CV and a brief description of your current clinical / research practice and why you must gain the skills the course will provide to neuroimagingyes@gmail.com by 5 May 2023.

All applicants will be notified regarding selection status.

Registration is free for selected applicants. 

Note: The course does not provide a CME or participation certificate. All the pipelines presented in the course are for research purposes only and are not approved for clinical use.

Organizing committee

  • Carolina Ferreira-Atuesta, The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, USA
  • Sebastián Ortiz, Instituto Roosevelt and Clínica del Country, Bogotá, Colombia
  • Jaiver Macea, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium