Neuroimaging in the evaluation of children and adolescents with intractable epilepsy: I. Magnetic resonance imaging and the substrates of epilepsy.

Recent advances in neuroimaging, particularly the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, have greatly enhanced our ability to visualize intraparenchymal anatomy. With the linkage between intracranial pathology and epilepsy now clearly established, the MRI data provides detailed information for the clinician treating patients with epilepsy. This article supplies the reader with an overview of the new techniques in MRI brain imaging that allow us to identify intracranial abnormalities, and a survey of some of the MRI-identified substrates of epilepsy.