Localization of Epileptic Seizure Focus by Computerized Analysis of fMRI Recordings

Abstract

By computerized analysis of cortical activity recorded via fMRI for pediatric epilepsy patients, we implement algorithmic localization of epileptic seizure focus within one of eight cortical lobes. Our innovative machine learning techniques involve intensive analysis of large matrices of mutual information coefficients between pairs of anatomically identified cortical regions. Drastic selection of pairs of regions with biologically significant inter-connectivity provides efficient inputs for our Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier. By imposing rigorous parameter parsimony to avoid overfitting we construct a small size MLP with very good percentages of successful classification.