Kochi, Feb 8 (PTI) Doctors at Amrita Hospital here have developed and patented a new method of analysing brain scans that helps pinpoint where seizures begin, using the patient’s brain data, officials said on Sunday.
A statement from the hospital said the method has been “scientifically validated” and could improve surgical outcomes for people with difficult-to-treat epilepsy.
Doctors at the private hospital said that for most people with epilepsy, medicines are sufficient to control seizures.
However, for nearly 30 per cent of patients, seizures continue due to a condition known as drug-resistant epilepsy, which can severely affect education, employment, independence, and quality of life, they said.
For many of these patients, surgery offers the best chance of becoming seizure-free.
The crucial part, however, is accurately identifying the exact area of the brain where seizures originate. For this, doctors often rely on a specialised scan called FDG-PET, which shows how different parts of the brain use energy, the statement said.
An FDG-PET scan is a nuclear imaging test that uses a small amount of radioactive sugar (fluorodeoxyglucose) to detect areas of high glucose metabolism, commonly employed to identify cancer, evaluate brain disorders, and assess inflammation.
Interpreting PET scans visually can be subjective, and subtle abnormalities are easily missed—particularly in patients whose MRI scans appear normal, doctors said.
To address this challenge, clinicians and researchers have developed a new, patient-specific method of analysing PET scans.
Instead of comparing a patient’s scan with scans from healthy individuals—a process that is costly and often impractical—the method compares the left and right sides of the patient’s own brain after careful alignment using MRI, they said.
This approach highlights small but meaningful differences in brain activity that may indicate where seizures originate.
The technique, known as PASCOM (PET Asymmetry after Anatomical Symmetrisation Coregistered to MRI), has been clinically validated and published in the prestigious Journal of Neurosurgery, the statement said.
“In the study, among patients who became seizure-free after surgery, the PASCOM method improved accuracy and consistency in identifying the seizure focus compared with conventional visual analysis,” it said.
Recognising its novelty and clinical importance, the technology has been patented in both India and the United States, the statement added.
Doctors said that the patent supports standardisation and responsible adoption, helping ensure that the method can be reliably implemented across healthcare systems.
“Beyond its technical contribution, the work has broader implications. By avoiding dependence on expensive or invasive methods, this approach may help make advanced epilepsy surgery planning more accessible, especially for hospitals in resource-constrained settings,” said Dr Siby Gopinath, Professor and Head of the Amrita Advanced Centre for Epilepsy. PTI TBA SSK
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