Treating Epilepsy via Thermal Ablation: Initial Experiments with an MRI-Guided Concentric Tube Robot

摘要

Epilepsy is a prevalent neurological disorder affecting 65 million people globally [1]. Anti-epileptic medications fail to provide effective seizure control for 30% of patients, placing them at a 7-17% risk of Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy and recurrent seizures. Surgical resection of the seizure focus is a potentially curative treatment for patients with seizures that electrophysiologically correlate to a focal lesion. For these patients, focal surgical resection can result in 60-70% seizure-freedom rates [2]. However, open resection carries the risk of cognitive impairment or focal neurologic deficit [3].