Review of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Post-processing for the Brain Tumor-related Epilepsy Study

Reuben George; Li Sze Chow; Kheng Seang Lim; Christine Audrey; Norlisah Ramli; Li-Kuo Tan

doi:10.2174/1573405620666230426150015

Review of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Post-processing for the Brain Tumor-related Epilepsy Study

Curr Med Imaging. 2023 Apr 26. doi: 10.2174/1573405620666230426150015. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Reuben George¹, Li Sze Chow¹, Kheng Seang Lim², Christine Audrey², Norlisah Ramli³, Li-Kuo Tan³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Technology and Built Environment, UCSI University, 1, Jalan Puncak Menara Gading, Taman Connaught, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Jln Profesor Diraja Ungku Aziz, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
³ Department of Biomedical Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Jln Profesor Diraja Ungku Aziz, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

PMID: 37170974
DOI: 10.2174/1573405620666230426150015

Abstract

20% of brain tumor patients present with seizures at the onset of diagnosis, while a further 25-40% develop epileptic seizures as the tumor progresses. Tumor-related epilepsy (TRE) is a condition in which the tumor causes recurring, unprovoked seizures. The occurrence of TRE differs between patients, along with the effectiveness of treatment methods. Therefore, determining the tumor properties that correlate with epilepsy can help guide TRE treatment. This article reviews the MRI sequences and image post-processing algorithms in the study of TRE. It focuses on epilepsy caused by glioma tumors because it is the most common type of malignant brain tumor and it has a high prevalence of epilepsy. In correlational TRE studies, conventional MRI sequences and diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) are used to extract variables related to the tumor radiological characteristics, called imaging factors. Image post-processing is used to correlate the imaging factors with the incidence of epilepsy. The earlier studies of TRE used univariate and multivariate analysis to study the correlations between specific variables and incidence of epilepsy. Later, studies used voxel-based morphometry and voxel lesion-symptom mapping. Radiomics has been recently used to post-process the images for the study of TRE. This article will discuss the limitation of the existing imaging modalities and post-processing algorithms. It ends with some suggestions and challenges for future TRE studies.

Keywords: Glioma; Lesion symptom mapping; MRI; Radiomics; Tumor-related epilepsy; Voxel Based Morphometry.