Identifying the characteristics of brain glucose metabolism using normal 18F-FDG PET database in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

Abstract

This study aimed to measure the global brain glucose metabolism of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) using MIMneuro software based on the normal brain glucose metabolism database. In this cross-sectional study, 23 patients (11 males and 12 females, mean age 25.6 ± 10.1years) with TLE who underwent 18F-labeled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) were enrolled. 18F-FDG PET images were then imported into MIMneuro software, which can automatically analyze the differences in regional brain glucose metabolism between patients and a normal database, and the results of different brain regions were presented by values of Z-score. In patients with TLE, 18F-FDG PET imaging showed that in addition to the presence of temporal lobe hypometabolism, there was hypometabolism in the ipsilateral hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, insula, amygdala, temporal operculum, and bilateral cerebellar hemisphere, while hypermetabolism was found in the contralateral temporal lobe, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, parietal lobule, angular gyrus, and precentral gyrus. There was no significant difference in brain areas between the left and the right temporal lobe seizures (P > 0.05). We found that TLE has a specific characteristic in terms of brain glucose metabolism, and the underlying mechanism needs to be further studied that may be helpful to localize seizure focus.