Multimodality functional imaging evaluation in a patient with Rasmussen's encephalitis.
Rasmussen's encephalitis (RE) is a cryptogenic progressive inflammatory disorder of the brain that causes severe neurological problems, including intractable focal epilepsy. In select patients, aggressive treatment using cerebral hemispherectomy may ameliorate the devastating cognitive decline that accompanies this disease, even if the epileptic focus appears broadly distributed. We present a case of histopathologically-confirmed RE evaluated using a multimodal process that explored the physical and functional aspects of the associated epilepsy. This process included magnetic resonance imaging, single photo emission computed tomography, electroencephalography, and magnetoencephalography (MEG). The findings indicate that functional brain imaging data may greatly assist the surgical treatment decision-making process in RE, especially when structural imaging fails to reveal definitive localizing information. In addition, MEG may provide insights about the cortical reorganization of somatosensory cortex following hemispherectomy.
Ishibashi
Hideaki
H
Department of Neurosurgery, Vivian L Smith Center for Neurologic Research, Division of Clinical Neurosciences, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA. hideaki.ishibashi@uth.tmc.edu
Simos
Panagiotis G
PG
Wheless
James W
JW
Baumgartner
James E
JE
Kim
Howard L
HL
Davis
Robert N
RN
Zhang
Wenbo
W
Papanicolaou
Andrew C
AC
D002648:Child; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004660:Encephalitis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon