Virtual brain twins for stimulation in epilepsy

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

Estimating the epileptogenic zone network (EZN) is an important part of the diagnosis of drug-resistant focal epilepsy and plays a pivotal role in treatment and intervention. Virtual brain twins, based on personalized whole brain modeling, provide a formal method for personalized diagnosis and treatment. They integrate patient-specific brain topography with structural connectivity from anatomical neuroimaging such as MRI, and dynamic activity from functional recordings such as EEG and stereo-EEG (SEEG). Seizures demonstrate rich spatial and temporal features in functional recordings, which can be exploited to estimate the EZN. Stimulation-induced seizures can provide important and complementary information. We considered invasive SEEG stimulation as the most practical current approach, and temporal interference (TI) stimulation as a potential future approach for non-invasive diagnosis and treatment. I will present a virtual brain twin framework for EZN diagnosis based on stimulation-induced seizures. This framework estimates the EZN and validated the results on synthetic data with ground-truth. It provides an important methodological and conceptual basis for a series of ongoing scientific studies and clinical usage. This framework also provides the necessary step to go from invasive to non-invasive diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant focal epilepsy.