Clinical application of spatiotemporal distributed source analysis in presurgical evaluation of epilepsy

Magnetoencephalography (MEG), which acquires neuromagnetic fields in the brain, is a useful diagnostic tool in presurgical evaluation of epilepsy. Previous studies have shown that MEG affects the planning intracranial electroencephalography placement and correlates with surgical outcomes by using a single dipole model. Spatiotemporal source analysis using distributed source models is an advanced method for analyzing MEG, and has been recently introduced for analyzing epileptic spikes. It has advantages over the conventional single dipole analysis for obtaining accurate sources and understanding the propagation of epileptic spikes. In this article, we review the source analysis methods, describe the techniques of the distributed source analysis, interpretation of source distribution maps, and discuss the benefits and feasibility of this method in evaluation of epilepsy.