Comparative study of diagnostic localization of PET, EEG and MRI imaging in patients with refractory epilepsy

Objectives The study is about the diagnostic value of PET, EEG and MRI for foci localization with refractory epilepsy.

Methods Fifty patients from December 2005 to December 2009 in our hospital with refractory epilepsy patients (male 32 cases, female 18 cases, age from 4 to 46, duration of disease from 5 to 25 years). All patients understood PET, EEG and MRI and rate of epileptic diagnostic localization and consistency in PET, EEG and MRI were analyzed and compared.

Results PET positive rate was 92%, with low metabolic foci in 38 cases, high metabolic foci in 6 cases, and both in 1 case. EEG positive rate was 74% (37), MRI positive rate was 36%(18). Consistency of foci diagnostic localization between PET and EEG was 72 %. Consistency of foci diagnostic localization between MRI and EEG was 32 %.

Conclusions PET imaging is more sensitive than EEG and MRI in detecting epileptic foci of children in ref ractory cases. Consistency between PET and EEG is well over that between MRI and EEG in foci localization.

Research Support This study was funded by a grant from Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia (20080404Zd29)