Structural brain assessment of temporal lobe epilepsy based on voxel-based and surface-based morphological features.

AIM OF THE STUDY

This study aimed to assess the cerebral voxel-based and surface-based morphological abnormalities of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A total of 100 healthy adults and 73 patients with TLE were enrolled in this study, and their 3D T1-weighted MRI data were collected. Voxel-based morphology (VBM) and surface-based morphology (SBM) tools were used to compare the morphological differences between healthy adults and patients with TLE. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to acquire the boundary values for detecting morphological abnormalities in regions of interest from the corrected VBM and SBM analysis.

RESULTS

Our results showed that cortical voxels and decreased thickness areas were located in the widespread cortex and subcortical structures in the TLE group. However, after completing the analysis, we found that the left-TLE lesions were limited to the left temporal pole and left hippocampus, while the right-TLE lesions were located in the bilateral medial temporal lobe, including the right hippocampus and bilateral amygdala. ROC-curve results showed that the volume of the left hippocampus at 4,124.45 mm3 and the thickness of the left temporal pole cortex at 3.50 mm could be used as optimal boundary values based on the curves of the left-TLE group. The right-TLE group curves were poor.

CONCLUSIONS

Widespread cerebral morphological TLE abnormalities were represented in this study. However, the lesions may be limited after completing a corrected comparison with clinical information. Boundary values of left-TLE group lesions were also obtained.