Ultra-High Resolution 7.0T MRI of Medial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Michael Maroun Zeineh¹, Josef Parvizi¹, Priti Balchandani¹, Chunlei Liu¹, Gary Glover¹, Anne Sawyer¹, Robert Fisher¹, Scott William Atlas¹

Ultra-high field human brain imaging holds the promise to visualize with great precision the biological substrates of medial temporal lobe (MTL) epilepsy. We performed 7.0T MRI brain scanning on 6 volunteers with medial temporal lobe epilepsy who had concurrent 1.5T or 3.0T MRIs. Compared to the lower field imaging, the 7.0T images demonstrated superior visualization of both the microscopic anatomy of the normal contralateral medial temporal lobe as well as atrophy of hippocampal cell fields in the abnormal hemisphere. High-field imaging has the potential to characterize and detect microscopic pathology associated with MTL epilepsy.