INTEGRATION OF EEG AND MRl DATA OF INDIVIDUAL BRAIN

Abstract

Accurate spatial localization of areas of pathological activity in the brain cortex is of great importance for studying processes of generation and propagation of electrical signals in the brain both in research and in clinic. This paper presents a method providing superposition of data acquired in EEG or EP examination with a patient’s cortical surface computed from MR images. To integrate electrophysiological information with MRI-scanned anatomy scalp electrodes are registered with the cortex surface using distance based alignment technique. This approach is automatic and does not require any external fiducial markers to be fixed on a patient’s head. It uses geometrical features derived from intrinsic image data to guide the alignment. That is why the method is easy to apply to numerous examinations in clinic. Once data are registered, they are fused and rendered in 3D space as colour surface maps. The usefulness ofthe method for neurological assessment is demonstrated by presenting results of EEG and SEP studies performed on two patients.