Raising the Profile of Magnetoencephalography (MEG) as a Localizing Tool for Epilepsy
In his role as president of the American Clinical MEG Society (ACMEGS), Jeff Tenney, MD, PhD, wants to help referring physicians see magnetoencephalography for what it is: an indispensable technology to directly measure and localize brain activity.
MEG has a unique ability to localize seizures, and extensive evidence supports its utility in presurgical epilepsy evaluations. However, unfamiliarity with the technology’s benefits and indications persists, even in the epilepsy community.
“Only MEG can measure fast, millisecond phenomena and also perform localization accurate to the millimeter level,” says Tenney, a pediatric epileptologist who is clinical director of the MEG Center at Cincinnati Children’s. “Based on the evaluation of several thousands of patients over the past several decades, MEG improves the surgical outcome of epilepsy patients. EEG and MEG go hand-in-hand in a comprehensive epilepsy surgery evaluation. Any patient who will undergo invasive EEG evaluation should have MEG completed prior to help guide the electrode placement.”
The non-invasive test measures the magnetic fields that naturally emanate whenever electric current flows within the neurons of the brain. The fields being measured are extremely weak, about a billion times smaller than the Earth's magnetic field. MEG’s sophisticated instrumentation is sensitive enough to detect these weak signals.
