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Hemodynamic response (BOLD/fMRI) in focal epilepsy with reference to benzodiazepine effect.

Ricci GB, De Carli D, Colonnese C, Di Gennaro G, Quarato PP, Cantore G, Esposito V, Garreffa G, Maraviglia B

Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Rome "La Sapienza," 00185 Rome, Italy.

We studied a new procedure of BOLD/fMRI acquisition in epilepsy. They use the benzodiazepine effect to achieve a more reliable baseline for statistical analysis. The method works only in the MR domain without EEG correlation. It compares the EPI images during interictal epileptic discharges and the images "inactivated" by benzodiazepine. The results in five out of eight patients show that this procedure in comparison with the EEG/fMRI method gives a net improvement of spatial definition of BOLD areas. These preliminary results seem to confirm the hypothesis that the better BOLD/fMRI procedure in epilepsy is to make use of physical features of MR that, unlike EEG, is not influenced by the distance of intercerebral sources and consequently allows a more complete and undistorted display of BOLD areas.

Published 14 February 2005 in Magn Reson Imaging, 22(10): 1487-92.
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