[Construction and analysis of brain metabolic network in temporal lobe epilepsy patients based on ¹⁸F-FDG PET]

The establishment of brain metabolic network is based on ¹⁸fluoro-deoxyglucose positron emission computed tomography ( ¹⁸F-FDG PET) analysis, which reflect the brain functional network connectivity in normal physiological state or disease state. It is now applied to basic and clinical brain functional network research. In this paper, we constructed a metabolic network for the cerebral cortex firstly according to ¹⁸F-FDG PET image data from patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).Then, a statistical analysis to the network properties of patients with left or right TLE and controls was performed. It is shown that the connectivity of the brain metabolic network is weakened in patients with TLE, the topology of the network is changed and the transmission efficiency of the network is reduced, which means the brain metabolic network connectivity is extensively impaired in patients with TLE. It is confirmed that the brain metabolic network analysis based on ¹⁸F-FDG PET can provide a new perspective for the diagnose and therapy of epilepsy by utilizing PET images.