March is epilepsy awareness month
Computer program brings hope to epileptics

It affects 300,000 Canadians. Yet this condition, which occasionally produces brief disturbances in the normal electrical functions of the brain, and is characterized by sudden, brief seizures, often falls off the radar as other health conditions compete for headlines.

The condition is Epilepsy and March is Epilepsy Awarness Month in Canada.

While drugs exist to control seizure problems, they don't work for 40% of Canadian epileptics. As a result, these patients have to consider surgical removal of brain lesions, or scar tissues, that cause seizures. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs) used in hospitals across the country help neurologists and neurosurgeons find the lesions. MRIs are produced using a radiology technique, and display internal images of the body on screen.

The problem is that it's not always easy to find these lesions in standard MRIs.

But, Dr. Andrea Bernasconi at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) has created a computer program that helps remedy this problem.

The computer program highlights, using MRIs, any abnormal brain tissue for a patient. This makes it easier for neurological teams at the MNI to detect seizurecausing brain lesions in certain epileptics - and then remove the problem in order to potentially reduce or eliminate seizures.

Surgery is not always proposed to some epileptics precisely because of lesion detection problems, but Dr. Bernasconi's computer program offers the needed clarity in MRIs.

"I think that this tool can provide the support and make a difference for those patients who are sent home with the answer 'you are not a surgical candidate because we don't find a lesion,'" says Dr. Bernasconi, a researcher funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

So far, Dr. Bernasconi's research tools have been applied to the pre-surgical evaluation of approximately 300 epileptics and have provided significant findings in a large proportion of them.

Peter Maitland, a CIHR employee who has dealt with epilepsy for the majority of his life, is one of those people.

"For years, four subtle lesions in my brain were virtually undetectable using MRIs," Maitland says. "All of this changed when I went to the MNI.

The computer program developed by Dr. Bernasconi helped the neurological team find the lesions. As a result, one of them was removed late-last year."

While seizure relief is not guaranteed, Maitland remains hopeful.

"I have to wait about a year to determine whether the surgery was beneficial for my system," Maitland says.

"While I want my seizures to disappear, I also hope that this research will provide hope to other epileptics who have suffered from similar lesion detection problems."