White matter microstructure characterisation in temporal lobe epilepsy

Abstract

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the most common form of focal epilepsy. Parameters of microstructural abnormalities derived from diffusion tensor imaging(DTI) have been reported to be helpful in differentiating between Left and Right TLE (L-TLE and R-TLE) but few of them compared L-TLE and R-TLE with a voxelwise approach. In this study, a whole brain tract based spatial statistical analysis was performed on DTI, diffusion kurtosis and NODDI derived parameters of 88 subjects to identify specific white matter patterns of alteration in patient affected by L-TLE and R-TLE with respect to healthy controls. Our findings demonstrated the presence of specific patterns of white matter alterations, with L-TLE more widely affected both in cerebral and cerebellar regions. This result supports the need to consider patients separately, according to the side of their pathology.