Can Artificial Intelligence Help Read Your Epilepsy MRI?

Find an Epilepsy MRI Near You

Did you know that medication doesn’t work for approximately one-third of all epileptic patients? If you or someone you love suffers from seizures that do not respond to medications, you may feel hopeless. Uncontrolled seizures make it difficult to work, enjoy an active lifestyle, and experience independence and freedom. When medications do not work, epilepsy surgery may be the only solution to stop seizures.

However, surgery is only successful if your medical team can pinpoint the precise location in your brain where the seizures start. An epilepsy MRI can help do just that.

An epilepsy MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) can help your medical team locate the focal point in the brain where your seizures originate. Unfortunately, many MRI scans do not show abnormalities. For every 10,000 patients with epilepsy, 3,000 will have completely normal MRI scans. For these patients, locating the focal point of their seizures is difficult and near-impossible.

 AI Helps Read Epilepsy MRIs

For these patients, Artificial Intelligence may help. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now teaching computers how to read MRI brain scans more precisely than the human eye. These machines are capable of detecting abnormalities we could not see before. This can help doctors find abnormalities that generate seizures. 

This new technology is already yielding successful outcomes for many patients with previously uncontrollable seizures. Researchers are training the AI algorithm by feeding it neuroimages to help it identify areas where seizures may be found. This has resulted in treatment for otherwise untreatable patients.

One such patient was a 34-year-old woman with uncontrollable seizures. Previously, she had normal-looking brain scans and doctors could not locate the focal point of her seizures. With AI, they found the source, performed surgery, and now she is living seizure-free.