Advanced relaxation-diffusion MRI improves lesion detection for sMRI-negative epilepsy

Motivation: Structural MRI (sMRI) has limited sensitivity to detect lesions in about ⅓ of patients with epilepsy. There is a critical need for more sensitive imaging techniques for epilepsy imaging. Goal(s): The goal of this pilot study is to develop novel imaging techniques to improve the sensitivity for lesion detection for patients with sMRI-negative epilepsy. Approach: We acquired relaxation-diffusion MRI (rdMRI) using a fast sequence and examined novel parametric and nonparametric modeling techniques for lesion detection on a sMRI-negative patient. Results: The proposed rdMRI measures revealed a lesion in a sMRI-negative patient that is not shown using standard single-TE dMRI technique. Impact: The proposed rdMRI acqistion and modeling techniques can significantly improve lesion detections for patients with sMRI-negative epilepsy. Once validated using larger datasets, the rdMRI techniques can be applied for surgical planning for epilepsy patients without using invasive diagnosis techniques.