Abstract
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) offers significant opportunities for the localization and characterization of focal and generalized epilepsies, but its potential has so far not been fully exploited, as the evidence for its effectiveness is still anecdotal. This is particularly true for pediatric epilepsy. MEG recordings on school-aged children typically rely on the use of MEG systems that were designed for adults, but children’s smaller head size and stature can cause significant problems. Reduced signal-to-noise ratio when recording from smaller heads, increased movement, reduced sensor coverage of anterior temporal regions, and incomplete insertion into the MEG helmet can all reduce the quality of data collected from children. We summarize these challenges and suggest some practical solutions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abramov I, Hainline L, Turkel J, Lemerise E, Smith H, Gordon J, Petry S (1984) Rocket-ship psychophysics. Assessing visual functioning in young children. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 25:1307–1315
Adjamian P, Barnes GR, Hillebrand A, Holliday IE, Singh KD, Furlong PL, Harrington E, Barclay CW, Route PJG (2004) Coregistration of magnetoencephalography with magnetic resonance imaging using bite-bar-based fiducials and surface-matching. Clin Neurophysiol 115:691–698
Agirre-Arrizubieta Z, Huiskamp GJ, Ferrier CH, Van Huffelen AC, Leijten FS (2009) Interictal magnetoencephalography and the irritative zone in the electrocorticogram. Brain 132(11):3060–3071
Barry JG, Ferguson MA, Moore DR (2010) Making sense of listening: the imap test battery. J Vis Exp 11:e2139
De Jongh A, De Munck JC, Goncalves SI, Ossenblok P (2005) Differences in MEG/EEG epileptic spike yields explained by regional differences in signal-to-noise ratios. J Clin Neurophysiol 22:153–158
Gaetz W, Cheyne D, Rutka JT, Drake J, Benifla M, Strantzas S, Widjaja E, Holowka S, Tovar-Spinoza Z, Otsubo H, Pang EW (2009) Presurgical localization of primary motor cortex in pediatric patients with brain lesions by the use of spatially filtered magnetoencephalography. Neurosurgery 64:177–185
Gaetz W, Otsubo H, Pang EW (2008) Magnetoencephalography for clinical pediatrics: the effect of head positioning on measurement of somatosensory-evoked fields. Clin Neurophysiol 119:1923–1933
Hauser WA (1995) Epidemiology of epilepsy in children. Neurosurg Clin N Am 6:419–429
Hillebrand A, Barnes GR (2002) A quantitative assessment of the sensitivity of whole-head MEG to activity in the adult human cortex. NeuroImage 16:638–650
Jeha LE, Najm I, Bingaman W, Dinner D, Widdess-Walsh P, Luders H (2007) Surgical outcome and prognostic factors of frontal lobe epilepsy surgery. Brain 130:574–584
Johnson BW, Crain S, Thornton R, Tesan G, Reid M (2010) Measurement of brain function in pre-school children using a custom sized whole-head MEG sensor array. Clin Neurophysiol 121(3):249–340
Kaiboriboon K, Nagarajan S, Mantle M, Kirsch HE (2010) Interictal MEG/MSIin intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy: spike yield and characterization. Clin Neurophysiol 121(3):325–331
Kakisaka Y, Wang ZI, Mosher JC, Dubarry AS, Alexopoulos AV, Enatsu R, Kotagal P, Burgess RC (2012) Clinical evidence for the utility of movement compensation algorithm in magnetoencephalography: successful localization during focal seizure. Epilepsy Res 101(1–2):191–196
Kirsch HE, Robinson SE, Mantle M, Nagarajan S (2006) Automated localization of magnetoencephalographic interictal spikes by adaptive spatial filtering. Clin Neurophysiol 117(10):2264–2267
Knowlton RC, Laxer KD, Aminoff MJ, Roberts TP, Wong ST, Rowley HA (1997) Magnetoencephalography in partial epilepsy: clinical yield and localization accuracy. Ann Neurol 42:622–631
Leijten FS, Huiskamp GJ, Hilgersom I, Van Huffelen AC (2003) High-resolution source imaging in mesiotemporal lobe epilepsy: a comparison between MEG and simultaneous EEG. J Clin Neurophysiol 20(4):227–238
Lin YY, Shih YH, Hsieh JC, Yu HY, Yiu CH, Yeh TC, Wong TT, Kwan SY, Ho LT, Yen DJ, Wu ZA, Chang MS (2003) Magnetoencephalographic yield of interictal spikes in temporal lobe epilepsy. Comparison with scalp EEG recordings. NeuroImage 19(3):1115–1126
Medvedovsky M, Taulu S, Gaily E, El M, Mäkelä JP, Ekstein D, Kipervasser S, Neufeld MY, Kramer U, Blomstedt G, Fried I, Karppinen A, Veshchev I, Roivainen R, Ben-Zeev B, Goldberg-Stern H, Wilenius J, Paetau R (2012) Sensitivity and specificity of seizure-onset zone estimation by ictal magnetoencephalography. Epilepsia 53(9):1649–1657
Nenonen J, Nurminen J, Kičić D, Bikmullina R, Lioumis P, Jousmäki V, Taulu S, Parkkonen L, Putaala M, Kähkönen S (2012) Validation of head movement correction and spatiotemporal signal space separation in magnetoencephalography. Clin Neurophysiol 123:2180–2191
Okada Y, Pratt K, Atwood C, Mascarenas A, Reineman R, Nurminen J, Paulson D (2006) BabySQUID: a mobile, high-resolution multichannel magnetoencephalography system for neonatal brain assessment. Rev Sci Instrum 77:1–9
Ossenblok P, De Munck JC, Colon A, Drolsbach W, Boon P (2007) Magnetoencephalography is more successful for screening and localizing frontal lobe epilepsy than electroencephalography. Epilepsia 48:2139–2149
Robinson SE, Vrba J (1999) Functional neuroimaging by synthetic aperture magnetometry (SAM). In: Yoshimoto T (ed) Recent advances in biomagnetism. Tohoku University Press, Sendai, pp 302–305
Snyder RG, Spencer ML, Owings CL, Schneider LW (1975) In: Physical characteristics of children as related to death and injury for consumer product safety design. UM-HSRI-Bi-75-5. Consumer Product Safety Commission (USA). Available via DIALOG. http://Ovrt.Nist.Gov/Projects/Anthrokids/
Sutherland ME, Zatorre RJ, Watkins KE, Hervé PY, Leonard G, Pike BG, Witton C, Paus T (2012) Anatomical correlates of dynamic auditory processing: relationship to literacy during early adolescence. NeuroImage 60:1287–1295
Wellmer J, Weber B, Urbach H, Reul J, Fernandez GE (2009) Cerebral lesions can impair fMRI-based language lateralization. Epilepsia 50(10):2213–2224
Wennberg R, Valiante T, Cheyne D (2011) EEGand MEG in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy: where do the spikes really come from? Clin Neurophysiol 122(7):1295–1313
Wilson HS (2004) Continuous head-localization and data correction in a whole-cortex MEG sensor. Neurol Clin Neurophysiol 30:56
Woods W, Gouws A, Green GGR (2012) Stereo camera MEG-MRI coregistration and head tracking. Poster presented at Biomag 2012, 18th international conference on biomagnetism, Paris, 26–30 Aug 2012
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Witton, C., Furlong, P.L., Seri, S. (2019). Technological Challenges of Pediatric MEG and Potential Solutions: The Aston Experience. In: Supek, S., Aine, C. (eds) Magnetoencephalography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00087-5_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00087-5_30
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00086-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00087-5
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences