Ictal High-Frequency Oscillation for Lateralizing Patients With Suspected Bitemporal Epilepsy Using Wavelet Transform and Granger Causality Analysis

Identifying lateralization of bilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is a challenging issue; scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and routine band electrocorticography (ECoG) fail to reveal the epileptogenic focus for further temporal lobectomy treatment. High-frequency oscillations (HFOs) can be utilized as a biomarker for lateralizing the onset zone in suspected bitemporal epilepsy. Except subjective vision detect the HFOs, objective verification should be performed to raise the accuracy. In the present research, we prospectively studied 10 patients with refractory temporal seizures and who underwent ECoG with wide-band frequency amplifiers (2,048 Hz); all patients had a class I outcome after temporal resection. Pre- and ictal HFOs will be analyzed by wavelet transform (WT) and Granger causality (GC) to objectively verify lateralization of the seizure onset zone (SOZ). WT analysis showed ictal HFOs in 10 patients mainly covered from 80 to 115 Hz (average, 92.59 ± 10.23 Hz), and there was distinct bandpass boundary between pre-ictal HFOs and ictal HFOs. GC analysis showed five patients (2, 4, 5, 6, and 7), no matter the pre-ictal or ictal state, had the highest GC degree in SOZ itself. The remaining patients (1, 3, 8, 9, and 10) had the highest GC degree in SOZ with its adjacent regions in the pre-ictal and ictal stages. GC analysis further confirmed the result of the WT and suggested HFOs are initiated and propagated in the local brain region mainly, afterward, transmitting to adjacent brain regions. These results indicated that the combination of WT and GC analyses significantly contributes to accurate lateralization in patients with suspected bitemporal epilepsy.