The clinical application of functional MRI in localizing the eloquent areas in Epilepsy Surgery

Objective: The role of functional MRI in pre-surgical evaluation of the eloquent area in the patients with intractable epilepsies has been recognizing. We aim to review the feasibility of application of the functional MRI in epileptic patient and to present our experiences in localizing the language area, memory, and sensorimotor area in Iranian population. Method: We reviewed the previous articles in clinical application of functional MRI, and then according to the most sensitive tasks we designed the new tasks in Farsi. The results of pilot-study in healthy people were completely satisfactory. After that, our epileptic cases with intractable seizure underwent the functional MRI with different tasks according to mental state and the need for localization of the underlying pathology. Results:Previous studies describe the mechanism of functional MRI, designing the tasks and analysis the results of the tests and our illustrative cases show how we use these methods for detecting plasticity and how to plan interventional protocols.

Keywords:

Epilepsy , functional MRI , Farsi