Using magnetic resonance elastography, researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology could improve the detection of epilepsy by comparing the stiffness of the hippocampus.
The study, published in NeuroImage: Clinical, involved a group of patients with unilateral mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) and another group of healthy participants.
“We calculated the ratio of hippocampal stiffness ipsilateral to epileptogenesis to the contralateral side for both groups,” the findings state.
“We found a higher hippocampal stiffness ratio in patients with MTLE compared with healthy participants, and that stiffness ratio differentiated MTLE from control groups effectively.”
In their results, the use of MRE allowed researchers to identify changes in the hippocampus. Early identification of such changes is vital for intervention at its beginning stages.
“Stiffness measured with MRE is sensitive to hippocampal pathology in MTLE and the addition of MRE to neuroimaging assessments may improve detection and characterization of the disease,” researchers concluded in their research paper.
