Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 14, Issue 1, July 2001, Pages 231-243
NeuroImage

Regular Article
A Longitudinal Quantitative MRI Study of Community-Based Patients with Chronic Epilepsy and Newly Diagnosed Seizures: Methodology and Preliminary Findings

https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0773Get rights and content

Abstract

Experimental and human data suggest that progressive cerebral damage may result from the cumulative effect of brief recurrent seizures. Longitudinal studies addressing this fundamental question, however, are lacking. We have addressed this need with a large prospective community-based observational study, which aims to rescan 154 patients with chronic active epilepsy and 90 patients with newly diagnosed seizures, after an interval of 3.5 years. Here, we describe the quantitative magnetic resonance methods used to identify subtle volume changes in hippocampal, cerebellar, and neocortical structures over time and report preliminary findings. Using this methodology, we have previously shown that we can reliably detect individual hippocampal volume (HV) and cerebellar volume (CBV) changes greater than 3.1 and 3.0%, respectively (Lemieux et al., 2000). Analysis of the first 53 subjects (24 patients with chronic active epilepsy, 9 patients with newly diagnosed seizures, and 20 controls) has demonstrated significant HV losses in 4 individuals. Automated and semiautomated calculation has detected significant reductions in CBV, total brain volume, and gray matter volume in 2, 3, and 1 subject, respectively. There were no significant white matter volume losses detected. Data collected from rescanning the entire cohorts will help to provide further information on the relationship between recurrent seizures and secondary brain damage.

References (45)

  • C. DeCarli et al.

    Extratemporal atrophy in patients with complex partial seizures of left temporal lobe origin

    Ann. Neurol.

    (1998)
  • J.S. Duncan et al.

    Technique for measuring hippocampal T2 relaxation time

    Am. J. Neuroradiol.

    (1996)
  • A.D. Everitt et al.

    Prospective, population-based MRI study of adult patients with newly-diagnosed epileptic seizures

    Epilepsia

    (1997)
  • A.D. Everitt et al.

    The NSE MRI study: Structural brain abnormalities in adult epilepsy patients and healthy controls

    Epilepsia

    (1998)
  • M.A. Falconer et al.

    Surgical treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy due to mesial temporal sclerosis. Etiology and significance

    Arch. Neurol.

    (1968)
  • W.R. Gowers

    Epilepsy and Other Chronic Convulsive Diseases: Their Causes, Symptoms, & Treatment

    (1881)
  • G. Hagemann et al.

    Cerebellar atrophy in a prospectively studied population with epilepsy: A volumetric MRI study

    NeuroImage

    (1999)
  • K. Held et al.

    Markov random field segmentation of brain MR images

    IEEE Trans. Med. Imag.

    (1997)
  • M. Honovar et al.
  • H.R. Jager et al.

    Assessment of brain changes with registered MR before and after bone marrow transplantation for chronic myeloid leukemia

    Am. J. Neuroradiol.

    (1996)
  • R. Kalviainen et al.

    Recurrent seizures may cause hippocampal damage in temporal lobe epilepsy

    Neurology

    (1998)
  • L. Lemieux

    Automatic, accurate and reproducible segmentation of the brain and cerebro-spinal fluid in T1-weighted volume MRI scans and its application to serial cerebral and intra-cranial volumetry

    Proc. SPIE Medical Imaging 2001

    (2000)
  • Cited by (52)

    • A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal hippocampal atrophy in healthy human ageing

      2015, NeuroImage
      Citation Excerpt :

      The hippocampus plays an essential role in memory function, goal selection, and mood regulation. Hippocampal volume changes have been associated with neurological conditions including Alzheimer's disease (Jack et al., 2000; West et al., 1994), Parkinson's disease (Camicioli et al., 2003), Huntington's disease (Majid et al., 2011), epilepsy (Liu et al., 2001), schizophrenia (Wang et al., 2008), and depression (Arnone et al., 2012; Steffens et al., 2011). Hippocampal volume changes also occur across the typical adult lifespan (Raz et al., 2010).

    • Are the Psychoses of Epilepsy a Neurological Disease?

      2008, Psychiatric Controversies in Epilepsy
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text