Abstracts

Rationale: Malformations of cortical development (MCDs) are disturbances in brain formation that arise from abnormalities affecting the processes of cortical development and involve cells that under normal circumstances would participate in formation of the cerebral cortex. Medically-intractable Epilepsy has been increasingly associated with MCDs. Diffusion tensor imaging is commonly used to locate alternative functional pathways in patients with malformations of cortical development. The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between white matter and covariates using 3Tesla Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). Methods: Data were acquired from 11 patients with MCD on a 3.0T Siemens Magnetom Tim Trio MRI, using a 12 channel head RF coil. Sixty four direction DTI was performed with 2mm isotropic resolution. Images were normalized using FMRIB's FA atlas template (FMRIB58_FA). In house Matlab code was used to apply Pearson's correlation test (corrcoef.m) at each spatial voxel between covariates and either FA or ADC values. Bonferroni correction (p<0.05/N) was used to threshold significant correlations. 3D correlations maps were ROI analyzed by using a 48 region of interest (ROI) white matter atlas from (JHU-WhiteMatter-labels-2mm). The total volume of correlation (VOC) as well as the weighted averages of the correlation coefficient were reported along with particular ROI. Results: VOC and volume weighted correlation coefficient are summarized in Table 1 for both FA and ADC images. For ADC correlations, VOC greater than 0.3 cm