Volumetric Magnetic Resonance Imaging Abnormalities In Epilepsy

Volumetric MRI abnormalities are common in different neurological disorders, one of these disorders is epilepsy, which has been found to cause many structural abnormalities in many .Objectives: to study the effect of epilepsy on the volume of certain brain areas like hippocampus, cerebellum and basal nuclei using MRIMethods: 120 epileptic patients (60 newly diagnosed, 60 chronic) beside 80 healthy controls were subjected to clinical assessment, MRI volumetric measuements of hippocampus, cerebellum and basal nuclei. Comparison of the mean and clinical correlations of the volumetric results with seizures related factors were done.Results: A significant volume reduction of the measured areas was found in the chronic epileptic patients with mean volume for hippocampus (Rt= 2.98±0.7, lt= 2.94±0.6), cerebellum (120.8±4.8), caudate (Rt= 3.4±0.46, Lt=3.5±0.45), lentiform (Rt= 5.7±0.9, Lt= 5.65±0.67) and thalamus (Rt=5.2±0.6, Lt= 5.4±0.8). This volume reduction was found to be strongly correlated to the disease choronisity factors as age of onset, epilepsy duration and finally seizure frequency.Conclusion: epilepsy has an adverse and injurious effect on different cerebral structures and by time it leads to significant cerebral atrophy.Key words: Epilepsy – MRI - Volumetric – abnormalities..