THE POSSIBILITIES OF MR TRACTOGRAPHY IN DIAGNOSTICS OF SYMPTOMATIC EPILEPSY IN CHILDREN WITH DIFFERENT GENESIS

摘要

In this article the possibilities of MR tractography in symptomatic epilepsy patients have been presented. We determined the quantitative standards of numerical values of diffusion of white matter in children with symptomatic epilepsy of various etiology. In children with symptomatic epilepsy, the pathological changes of white matter were localized not only in the epileptogenic, but also in the opposite hemisphere. The regions with abnormal white matter FA and ADC values not only matched to limbic circle zones, but also to areas of intra- and interhemispheric connections uniting the frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes of the brain. Determining the specific clusters of brain tracts in symptomatic epilepsy, regardless of etiology, is important to predict the prognosis of the disease and the likely possibility of cognitive impairment. The study proved that symptomatic epilepsy is characterized by a variety of changes in the white matter of the brain tracts that lead to the dissociation of certain regions of the brain, interrupting connections between cortical and subcortical regions and inhibiting the transfer of information. It can be concluded, that diffusion-weighted imaging are much more sensitive to the structural and metabolic changes occurring in the brain, in comparison with conventional MRI images.