EEG source imaging: correlating source locations and extents with electrocorticography and surgical resections in epilepsy patients.

SUMMARY: It is desirable to estimate epileptogenic zones with both location and extent information from noninvasive EEG. In the present study, the authors use a subspace source localization method (FINE), combined with a local thresholding technique, to achieve such tasks. The performance of this method was evaluated in interictal spikes from three pediatric patients with medically intractable partial epilepsy. The thresholded subspace correlation, which is obtained from FINE scanning, is a favorable marker, which implies the extents of current sources associated with epileptic activities. The findings were validated by comparing the results with invasive electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings of interictal spike activity. The surgical resections in these three patients correlated well with the epileptogenic zones identified from both EEG sources and ECoG potential distributions. The value of the proposed noninvasive technique for estimating epileptiform activity was supported by satisfactory surgery outcomes.