Scientists at the Human Brain Project have developed a computational tool that helps locate areas where epilepsy seizures develops in patients’ brain. Currently, the team uses EBRAINS to help enhance the efficiency with high resolution brain atlas data.
With an ongoing clinical trial, the development aims at providing surgeons a powerful and precise tool to assist in targeted surgery decisions for every patient.
Epilepsy is one of the most prominent brain disorders that affects more than 50 million people globally. People who suffer from the disorders experience seizures caused by sudden neuronal activity engaging at times large networks of the brain. In One out of three cases, the disease shows resistance to drugs. The best option for treatment in this case is surgical removal of the “epileptogenic zone”, the aspects of the brain where the seizures develop.
The lead scientist of the project, Viktor Jirsa said: “Surgery success depends on locating these areas as precisely as possible. But in clinical practice this often proves very difficult, and the average surgery success rate remains at only around 60%. Any improvement would have major impact for many patients.”
Viktor developed a computational tool called “The Virtual Brain” (TVB), to imitate and predict a patient’s brain activity. The scientist worked together with a neurologist Fabrice Bartolomei to adapt the model to epilepsy, to imitate the spread individual seizure activity. The model eventually can serve as an added advisory tool for neurosurgeons in the targeting surgeries more efficiently.
They are planning a clinical trial to assess personalized brain models of The Virtual Brain as a new tool in planning epilepsy surgery with the potential of a first positive result. It is essential to emphasize that the TVB is still at the clinical investigation stage, there it is not available yet to patients.
Currently, the project team are working on the next generation of the TVB that will further enhance the efficacy of the model using the EBRAINS research facility. Their aim is to remarkably improve the ability for personalized brain depiction with the aid of large brain data sets from EBRAINS Brain Atlas which consists of the most accurate 3D depiction of the brain’s anatomy, the BigBrain, at 20 micrometres resolution.
The lead scientist, Jirsa added: “Only EBRAINS allows to go to this massive scale and resolution. Here brain data resources are made compatible and integrated with high-performance computing and informatics tools. EBRAINS enables the application of deep learning and other methods to find the configuration that most closely matches the patient’s own recordings of brain dynamics. This is an important step towards pinpointing the epileptogenic zone with greater precision.”
The CEO of EBRAINS and director general of the HBP, Pawel Swieboda, added: “Prof Jirsa’s Virtual Brain computing tool is one of the many breakthrough achievements resulting from the cutting-edge scientific expertise of the Human Brain Project scientists and from the state-of-the art research infrastructure EBRAINS. We’re looking forward to sharing more brain health advances enabled by EBRAINS in the future. Meanwhile we invite researchers in different fields, such as neuroscience, neuroengineering, or neurotechnology – to list a few – to explore how the EBRAINS platform can enhance their own research.”
