Abstracts

Rationale: Direct electrical stimulation (DES) has been considered the “gold standard” for brain functional mapping both extraoperatively and intraoperatively for patients undergoing brain surgeries in close vicinity to eloquent areas. However, the lack of clinical research tools for data collection, visualization and sharing has prevented the use of these data in understanding the reorganization of human brain functional networks in epilepsy patients. Methods: In this study, we developed a new platform to address above-mentioned issues for human brain functional mapping based on DES. A total of 76 patients’ mapping results (2004-2017) were obtained for this study at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. To localize the intracranial electrode locations, the co-registrations between pre-op MRI and post-op CT were performed using our toolbox. The electrodes’ coordinates were transformed into MNI space. The neurologists’ hand-written notes were entered into the program by research assistants, EEG/LTM technicians, and neurologists. Data entry was conducted in a GUI-based application developed in Matlab. Results: All mapping results can be visualized in both patient-specific MRI space and MNI standardized space, and would be updated in the database, where users could search for a certain function and see how it is distributed in the MNI brain in comparison to the patient’s brain. The application could also provide a clinical reference for stimulation currents which have been applied to previous patients and produced observable responses within various anatomical areas. The observed behaviors and subjective reports were classified and could be visualized in different categories. Conclusions: This new platform could be a very useful clinical and educational tool. The adaptation of this GUI-based platform could be used to compile datasets across institutions under a single framework, which is not practical with current clinical practices. Funding: N/A