Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Epilepsy is defined as recurrent seizures and is one of the most common neurological conditions. One in ten people will experience a seizure at some time during their life with one in one hundred people being affected by epilepsy. Improvement in the diagnosis and treatment of this condition will have significant impact on the quality of life of a large portion of the population. Currently epilepsy is diagnosed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain. However, some lesions that are characteristic of epilepsy are difficult to detect with a simple visual inspection of these images by a radiologist. The goal of this research is to develop automated software tools that will help physicians extract the relevant diagnostic information from MRI images. In particular, to develop an automated technique for the identification and characterization of tissue types in the brain based on multi-resolution texture analysis so that ultimately healthy tissue can be reliably distinguished from unhealthy tissue. The computer vision techniques and tools that are developed will aid in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy.