查看文章

When medically intractable epilepsy is multifocal or focal but poorly localized, neuromodulation can be useful therapy. One such technique is deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeting the anterior nucleus of the thalamus (ANT). Unfortunately, the ANT is difficult to visualize in standard MRI sequences and its indirect targeting is difficult because of thalamic variability and atrophy in patients with epilepsy. The following study describes the novel use of the fast gray matter acquisition T1 inversion recovery (FGATIR) MRI sequence to delineate the mammillothalamic tract for direct targeting of the ANT through visualizing the termination of the mammillothalamic tract in the ANT.

The day prior to surgery in a 19-year-old, right-handed woman with a 5-year history of epilepsy, MRI was performed on a 3-T Siemens Prisma scanner (Siemens AG, Healthcare Sector) using a 64-channel head and neck coil. As part of the …