Automated interictal spike detection and source localization in magnetoencephalography using independent components analysis and spatio-temporal clustering (original) (raw)

Localization of Interictal Epileptic Spikes With MEG

Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, 2016

OBJECTIVE-To describe and optimize an automated beamforming technique followed by identification of locations with excess kurtosis (g2) for efficient detection and localization of interictal spikes in medically refractory epilepsy patients. METHODS-Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry with g2 averaged over a sliding time window (SAMepi) was performed in 7 focal epilepsy patients and 5 healthy volunteers. The effect of varied window lengths on detection of spiking activity was evaluated. RESULTS-Sliding window lengths of 0.5-10 seconds performed similarly, with 0.5 and 1 second windows detecting spiking activity in one of the 3 virtual sensor locations with highest kurtosis. These locations were concordant with the region of eventual surgical resection in these 7 patients who remained seizure free at one year. Average g2 values increased with increasing sliding window length in all subjects. In healthy volunteers kurtosis values stabilized in datasets longer than two minutes. CONCLUSIONS-SAMepi using g2 averaged over 1 second sliding time windows in datasets of at least 2 minutes duration reliably identified interictal spiking and the presumed seizure focus in these 7 patients. Screening the 5 locations with highest kurtosis values for spiking activity is an efficient and accurate technique for localizing interictal activity using MEG. SIGNIFICANCE-SAMepi should be applied using the parameter values and procedure described for optimal detection and localization of interictal spikes. Use of this screening procedure could significantly improve the efficiency of MEG analysis if clinically validated.

Towards source volume estimation of interictal spikes in focal epilepsy using magnetoencephalography

NeuroImage, 2012

Interictal spikes are a hallmark of cortical epileptogenicity; their spatial distribution in the cortex defines the so-called 'irritative' zone or spiking volume (SV). Delineating the SV precisely is a challenge during the presurgical evaluation of patients with epilepsy. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings enable determination of the brain sources of epileptic spikes using source localization procedures. Most previous clinical MEG studies have relied on dipole modeling of epileptic spikes, which does not permit a volumetric estimation of the spiking cortex. In the present study, we propose a new source modeling procedure, Volumetric Imaging of Epileptic Spikes (VIES). In VIES, the SV is identified as the 3D region where sources of the high frequency activities (> 20 Hz) associated with epileptic spikes are distributed. We localized these sources using a beamforming approach (DICS, Dynamic Imaging of Coherent Neural Sources). To determine the optimal parameters and accuracy of the method, we compared the SV obtained by VIES with the SV defined by the invasive gold standard, intracranial stereotactic EEG recordings (SEEG), in 21 patients with focal epilepsy. Using rigorous validation criteria based on the exact anatomical location of SEEG contacts, we found that the overall sensitivity of VIES for detecting spiking SEEG contacts was 76% and its specificity for correctly identifying nonspiking SEEG contacts was 67%, indicating a good agreement between VIES and SEEG. Moreover, we found that classical dipole clustering was not informative in 9/21 patients, while VIES enable to delineate the SV in all patients. For the 12 patients having a SV delineated both with VIES and dipole clustering, VIES method had higher sensitivity and lower specificity. This proof-of-concept study shows that VIES is a promising approach to non-invasive estimation of the SV in focal epilepsy.

Fast oscillations associated with interictal spikes localize the epileptogenic zone in patients with partial epilepsy

Neuroimage, 2008

Although interictal epileptic spikes are defined as fast transient activity, the spatial distribution of spike-related high-frequency power changes is unknown. In this study, we localized the sources of spikelocked power increases in the beta and gamma band with magnetoencephalography and an adaptive spatial filtering technique and tested the usefulness of these reconstructions for determining the epileptogenic zone in a population of 27 consecutive presurgical patients with medication refractory partial epilepsies. The reliability of this approach was compared to the performance of conventional MEG techniques such as equivalent current dipole (ECD) models. In patients with good surgical outcome after a mean follow-up time of 16 months (Engel class I or II), the surgically resected area was identified with an accuracy of 85% by sources of spike-locked beta/gamma activity, which compared favorably with the accuracy of 69% found for ECD models of single spikes. In patients with a total of more than 50 spikes in their recordings, the accuracies increased to 100% vs. 88%, respectively. Imaging of spike-locked beta/gamma power changes therefore seems to be a reliable and fast alternative to conventional MEG techniques for localizing epileptogenic tissue, in particular, if more than 50 interictal spikes can be recorded.

Spike cluster analysis in neocortical localization related epilepsy yields clinically significant equivalent source localization results in magnetoencephalogram (MEG)

Clinical Neurophysiology, 2003

Objective: In magnetoencephalogram (MEG) recordings of patients with epilepsy several types of sharp transients with different spatiotemporal distributions are commonly present. Our objective was to develop a computer based method to identify and classify groups of epileptiform spikes, as well as other transients, in order to improve the characterization of irritative areas in the brain of epileptic patients. Methods: MEG data centered on selected spikes were stored in signal matrices of C channels by T time samples. The matrices were normalized and euclidean distances between spike representations in vector space R C£T were input to a Ward's hierarchical clustering algorithm. Results: The method was applied to MEG data from 4 patients with localization-related epilepsy. For each patient, distinct spike subpopulations were found with clearly different topographical field maps. Inverse computations to selected spike subaverages yielded source solutions in agreement with seizure classification and location of structural lesions, if present, on magnetic resonance images. Conclusions: With the proposed method a reliable categorization of epileptiform spikes is obtained, that can be applied in an automatic way. Computation of subaverages of similar spikes enhances the signal-to-noise ratio of spike field maps and allows for more accurate reconstruction of sources generating the epileptiform discharges.

Electric source imaging of interictal activity accurately localises the seizure onset zone

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 2014

Objective: It remains controversial whether interictal spikes are a surrogate of the seizure onset zone (SOZ). Electric source imaging (ESI) is an increasingly validated non-invasive approach for localising the epileptogenic focus in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy undergoing evaluation for surgery, using high-density scalp EEG and advanced source localisation algorithms that include the patient's own MRI. Here we investigate if localisation of interictal spikes by ESI provides valuable information on the SOZ.

Dipole Localization for Identification of Neuronal Generators in Independent Neighboring Interictal EEG Spike Foci

Epilepsia, 2001

Summary: Purpose: We evaluated dipole localizations of independent neighboring interictal spike foci using scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) to identify neuronal generators of epileptic discharges.Methods: Three pediatric patients with extratemporal lobe epilepsy who had two independent neighboring interictal spike foci on scalp EEG were studied. Prolonged video EEG was digitally recorded from 19 scalp electrodes, whose positions were registered using a three-dimensional digitizer. Interictal spikes were visually selected based on negative phase reversals on bipolar montages. We analyzed the dipole position and moment of each spike using a single moving dipole and three-shell spherical head model. The dipoles were overlaid onto magnetic resonance (MR) images and divided into two groups based on two spike foci.Results: The dipoles of the two groups were oriented either tangentially or radially to the scalp in close proximity to each other. The dipoles oriented radially were located underneath the electrode with a negative peak; those oriented tangentially were between electrodes with a negative and positive peak. The positions of tangential dipoles were more concentrated than those of radial dipoles. The epileptogenic regions corresponded to the dipole localizations. Surgical excisions were performed based on the results of electrocorticography. After surgery, two patients were seizure free, and one had rare seizures (follow-up period, 13–31 months).Conclusions: We showed that dipoles in close proximity but with different orientations projected two negative maxima on scalp EEG in three patients with extratemporal localization-related epilepsy. Equivalent current dipole analysis of individual interictal spikes can provide useful information about the epileptogenic zone in these patients.

3D source localization of interictal spikes in epilepsy patients with MRI lesions

Physics in Medicine and Biology, 2006

Objective-The present study aims to accurately localize epileptogenic regions which are responsible for epileptic activities in epilepsy patients by means of a new subspace source localization approach, i.e. First-principle-vectors (FINE), using scalp EEG recordings. Methods-Computer simulations were first performed to assess source localization accuracy of FINE under the clinical electrode setup. The source localization results from FINE were compared with the results from a classic subspace source localization approach, i.e. MUSIC, and their differences were tested statistically using the paired t-test. Other influence factors to source localization accuracy were assessed statistically by ANOVA. The interictal epileptiform spike data from three adult epilepsy patients with medically intractable partial epilepsy and well-defined symptomatic MRI lesions were then studied using both FINE and MUSIC. The comparison between the electrical sources estimated by the subspace source localization approaches and MRI lesions were made through the co-registration between the EEG recordings and MRI scans. The accuracy of estimations made by FINE and MUSIC was also evaluated and compared by R 2 statistic, which was used to indicate the goodness-of-fit of the estimated sources to the scalp EEG recordings. The 3concentric-spheres head volume conductor model was build for each patient with different radii of three spheres which takes the individual head size and thickness of individual skull into the consideration. Results-The results from computer simulations indicate that the improvement of source spatial resolvability and localization accuracy of FINE as compared with MUSIC is significant when simulated sources are closely spaced, deep, or signal-to-noise-ratio is low in a clinical electrode setup. The interictal electrical generators estimated by FINE and MUSIC are in concordance with the patients' structural abnormality, i.e. MRI lesions, in all three patients. The higher R 2 values achieved by FINE than MUSIC indicate that FINE provides a more satisfactory fitting of the scalp potential measurements than MUSIC in all patients. Conclusions-The present results suggest that FINE provides a useful brain source imaging technique, from clinical EEG recordings, for identifying and localizing epileptogenic regions in epilepsy patients with focal partial seizures. Significance-The present study may lead to establishment of a high resolution source localization technique from the scalp recorded EEGs for aiding presurgical planning in epilepsy patients.

Reproducibility of EEG-MEG fusion source analysis of interictal spikes: Relevance in presurgical evaluation of epilepsy

Human brain mapping, 2018

Fusion of electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data using maximum entropy on the mean method (MEM-fusion) takes advantage of the complementarities between EEG and MEG to improve localization accuracy. Simulation studies demonstrated MEM-fusion to be robust especially in noisy conditions such as single spike source localizations (SSSL). Our objective was to assess the reliability of SSSL using MEM-fusion on clinical data. We proposed to cluster SSSL results to find the most reliable and consistent source map from the reconstructed sources, the so-called consensus map. Thirty-four types of interictal epileptic discharges (IEDs) were analyzed from 26 patients with well-defined epileptogenic focus. SSSLs were performed on EEG, MEG, and fusion data and consensus maps were estimated using hierarchical clustering. Qualitative (spike-to-spike reproducibility rate, SSR) and quantitative (localization error and spatial dispersion) assessments were performed using the ...

Source localization of the seizure onset zone from ictal EEG/MEG data

Human brain mapping, 2016

Surgical treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy relies on the identification of the seizure onset zone (SOZ) and often requires intracranial EEG (iEEG). We have developed a new approach for non-invasive magnetic and electric source imaging of the SOZ (MSI-SOZ and ESI-SOZ) from ictal magnetoencephalography (MEG) and EEG recordings, using wavelet-based Maximum Entropy on the Mean (wMEM) method. We compared the performance of MSI-SOZ and ESI-SOZ with interictal spike source localization (MSI-spikes and ESI-spikes) and clinical localization of the SOZ (i.e., based on iEEG or lesion topography, denoted as clinical-SOZ). A total of 46 MEG or EEG seizures from 13 patients were analyzed. wMEM was applied around seizure onset, centered on the frequency band showing the strongest power change. Principal component analysis applied to spatiotemporal reconstructed wMEM sources (0.4-1 s around seizure onset) identified the main spatial pattern of ictal oscillations. Qualitative sublobar concordance...