Displasia cortical focal: hallazgos en imágenes de tensor de difusión

Abstract

ObjectiveFocal cortical dysplasia (DCF) in an anomaly of cortical development. It represents one of the most frequent causes of drug resistant epilepsy and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is trivial for its diagnosis. In the last years the use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has increased in this kind of pathology. The purpose of this work was to evaluate retrospectively DTI findings on fractional anisotropy maps in patients with FCD. ObservationsWe retrospectively searched patients with confirmed anatomo-pathological diagnosis of FCD in our hospital database. From a total of 74, 8 patients, with isolated diagnosis of FCD and preoperative MRI with DTI, were selected. The FCD was identified in conventional anatomical MRI in all patients. Fractional anisotropy (FA) maps were evaluated and changes in the region of FCD were defined. Decreased FA was observed in white matter adjacent to the FCD, in 7 of 8 patients (87.5%). DiscussionFindings of DTI gives us complementary information to those of conventional MRI. Most of our patients showed no signal changes of white matter in conventional sequences and they presented decreased FA in DTI. We don’t actually know if these DTI findings represent structural changes in white matter or just functional changes secondary to the adjacent FCD. We think DTI can give valuable complementary information for the diagnosis and determination of the extension of this pathology.