(18)F-FDG PET Database of Adult Healthy Individuals for Clinical Studies in Epileptic Patients

Epilepsy is the most common chronic neurological disorder in the world, affecting more than 50 million people worldwide.

Approximately 35% of patients with epilepsy are refractory to all available antiepileptic drugs. Focal Hypometabolism on interictal [18F]-FDG PET is a hallmark of the Seizure Onset Zone as well as surrounding areas. Using [18F]-FDG PET is thus particularly useful to determine the seizure onset zone of epileptic patients and thus to guide surgical treatment when antiepileptic drugs fail.

Interpretation of PET images primarily relies on standard visual analysis, but statistical analysis, with the widely used Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) software improves the diagnostic yield of PET. Over the past years, some authors have thus reported that the use of SPM can result in greater sensitivity and specificity of PET imaging in patients with partial epilepsy.

In order to perform statistical analysis of PET images to compare brain metabolism of epileptic patients and healthy controls, it is necessary to collect a normative database of [18F]-FDG PET images in healthy controls.

The purpose of this study is (i) collect a normative database of [18F]-FDG PET images in healthy adults controls to evaluate rigorously the diagnostic value of multimodal imaging for non-invasive localization of the EZ and (ii) to evaluate the test-retest reliability of [18F]-FDG PET scanning.