An international team of researchers has developed a tool based on artificial intelligence (AI) that identifies cortical focal dysplasia, one of the main causes of refractory epilepsy to medicines and very difficult to diagnose. The details were released in the magazine Jama Neurology.
Focal cortical dysplasia is a cortex malformation characterized by lesions in some regions of the brain. Patients with the condition tend to have anticonvulsive treatment resistance and thus surgery (to remove injured areas) remains as the only alternative to reduce the symptoms of the disease. However, these brain injuries are often very subtle and difficult to detect, which makes the treatment of cortical focal dysplasia even more challenging.
From machine learning techniques and magnetic resonance data analysis of 1,185 participants – including 703 people with cortical focal dysplasia and 482 controls – the tool, called MELD GRAPH, managed to detect abnormalities from brain images.
The tool, whose algorithm is available publicly, detected 64% of brain abnormalities linked to epilepsy that radiologist doctors had not detected. As a result, Meld Graph is expected to serve more than 4 million people around the world who live with this cause of epilepsy.
International collaboration
THE work It was conducted within the Enigma Consortium, an international network that brings together scientists from areas such as genomic image, neurology and psychiatry. The group seeks to understand brain structure and function based on high resolution magnetic resonance imaging, genetic data and other information from patients with epilepsy, parkinson, Alzheimer, autism, schizophrenia and other neurodegenerative diseases.
The development of the AI tool was carried out by researchers at King’s College London and University College London, both from the UK. High quality magnetic resonance imaging were provided by 23 epilepsy research centers around the world that are part of the consortium. The Brazilian Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology (Brainn) was one of the institutions with high capacity capture and image analysis to provide data for the project.
“In this type of epilepsy, patients – who can be adults or children – have 30 or even 50 epileptic seizures per day. It is severe and usually the crises are not controlled by medicines. Therefore, surgery for the removal of brain lesions, although very difficult to do, is the most suitable for these cases. The new tool can greatly assist these patients, giving more speed to treatment and, above all, improvement in the quality of life of these people and families, ”he says to Agency FAPESP Clarissa Yasuda, professor at the Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas (FCM-Unicamp) and Member of Brainn, a Research, Innovation and Diffusion Center (CEPID) of FAPESP.
According to Luca Palma of Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Italy, Meld Graph identified a subtle injury that many radiologists did not realize in a 12 -year -old boy who had daily epileptic seizures and had tried nine anticonvulsive medicines without any improvement in his condition. “This tool can identify patients with epilepsy that can be surgically treated and help with surgical planning – reducing risk, saving money and improving results,” the researcher said in a press release.
In addition to reducing costs and giving patient quality of life, another important benefit of the new tool is the possibility of expanding the understanding of cortical focal dysplasia. “It is a brain malformation on which there is still much to discover. From the analysis of these high quality images and the use of the tool we can identify patterns, impossible to be perceived without artificial intelligence, and answer questions such as the origin of this problem, ”says Fernando Cendes, professor at FCM-Unicamp and Brainn coordinator.
This content was originally published in AI detect invisible brain abnormalities in people with epilepsy on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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