AI Tool Revolutionizes Epilepsy Treatment in Children by Detecting Tiny Brain Lesions

AI tool detects tiny brain lesions to improve epilepsy treatment in children

Murdoch Childrens Research InstituteSep 30 2025 An advanced AI tool can detect tiny brain lesions that cause severe epilepsy in children, allowing faster diagnosis, more precise treatment and a potential cure, according to a new study. Developed by a team at Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and The Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), the 'AI epilepsy detective' can find lesions (focal cortical dysplasias) the size of a blueberry, in up to 94 per cent of cases with the support of medical imaging. MCRI's Dr. Emma Macdonald-Laurs, a RCH neurologist, who led the team that created the detector, said more accurate diagnosis of cortical dysplasia would lead to faster referrals for epilepsy surgery, fewer seizures and improved long-term developmental outcomes. Identifying the cause early lets us tailor treatment options and helps neurosurgeons plan and navigate surgery. With more accurate imaging, neurosurgeons can develop a safer surgical roadmap to avoid important blood vessels and brain regions that control speech, thinking and movement and removing healthy brain tissue. Children also avoid the need to have to undergo invasive testing." Dr. Emma Macdonald-Laurs, a RCH neurologist Published in Epilepsia, the MCRI led study involved 71 children at the RCH and 23 adults at the Austin Hospital with cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy, which causes recurring seizures. Before using the AI detector's keen eye, the study found 80 per cent of patients had their diagnosis missed by human examination of their MRI results. MRI and FDG-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET scans) were used to train the detector, with children separated into training and test cohorts. A separate group of adult scans were used for additional validation of the detector's performance. Using information from both MRI and PET scans, the best result was recorded in the test cohort with a success rate of 94 per cent. Of the 17 children in the test group, 12 had surgery and 11 are now seizure free. About one in 200 children has epilepsy. Cortical dysplasias, which develop when the baby is still in the womb, are a common cause of drug-resistant seizures. "The seizures usually start out of the blue during the preschool or early school years before escalating to multiple times a day," Dr Macdonald-Laurs said. "Children often need to attend the emergency department or be admitted to hospital for treatment. Over time, frequent seizures impact on a child's behaviour, mood and ability to learn. "Epilepsy due to cortical dysplasia can, however, be improved or cured with epilepsy surgery if the abnormal brain tissue can be located and removed." But Dr Macdonald-Laurs said cortical dysplasias were hard to spot on routine MRIs, with less than half being recognised on a child's first scan. "Cortical dysplasias can be impossible for traditional MRI techniques to identify," she said. "Failure to locate the abnormal tissue slows the pathway to a definitive diagnosis and may stop a child being referred for potentially curative epilepsy surgery. "The longer a child continues to have uncontrolled seizures, the more likely they are to develop learning difficulties, including intellectual disability." Dr Macdonald-Laurs said with additional funding the team could test the detector in paediatric hospitals across Australia. Royal, 5, successfully underwent surgery after scans, aided by the detector, identified a cortical dysplasia. Mum Gurjinder said he went from having multiple seizures a day to now being seizure free following the procedure. "The seizures started to become increasingly frequent, from a couple a day to one every half an hour, until they started to appear in clusters," she said. "The worst being 19 seizures within just two hours. Every time Royal's whole body would freeze for at least a minute and as the days went on, he lost his appetite." Gurjinder said after Royal experienced a longer seizure, causing a heavy nosebleed, he was rushed to the local hospital where he was given antiseizure medications. But with those failing to help and an MRI unable to provide answers, Royal was transferred to the RCH where the cortical dysplasia, was located and removed. "The whole ordeal took a huge toll on our family and we were struggling mentally," Gurjinder said. "We were so lucky that we quickly picked up that something was wrong because young children can't always explain what they are going through. "Without the assistance of the detector, it would have taken so much longer to achieve a diagnosis and Royal's health would have continued to deteriorate. We are so thankful that Royal is now back to his calm, friendly, patient self." Researchers from The Royal Children's Hospital, the University of Melbourne, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Harvard Medical School and the Austin Hospital also contributed to the study. Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Journal reference: Macdonald‐Laurs, E., et al. (2025). Automated detection of bottom‐of‐sulcus dysplasia on magnetic resonance imaging-positron emission tomography in patients with drug‐resistant focal epilepsy. Epilepsia. doi.org/10.1111/epi.18628

Advanced AI tool detects tiny brain lesions in children with epilepsy

An advanced AI tool can detect tiny brain lesions that cause severe epilepsy in children, allowing faster diagnosis, more precise treatment and a potential cure, according to a new study. Developed by a team at Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and The Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), the "AI epilepsy detective" can find lesions (focal cortical dysplasias) the size of a blueberry, in up to 94% of cases with the support of medical imaging. MCRI's Dr. Emma Macdonald-Laurs, an RCH neurologist who led the team that created the detector, said more accurate diagnosis of cortical dysplasia would lead to faster referrals for epilepsy surgery, fewer seizures and improved long-term developmental outcomes. "Identifying the cause early lets us tailor treatment options and helps neurosurgeons plan and navigate surgery," she said. "With more accurate imaging, neurosurgeons can develop a safer surgical roadmap to avoid important blood vessels and brain regions that control speech, thinking and movement and removing healthy brain tissue. Children also avoid the need to have to undergo invasive testing." Published in Epilepsia, the MCRI-led study involved 71 children at the RCH and 23 adults at the Austin Hospital with cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy, which causes recurring seizures. Before using the AI detector's keen eye, the study found 80% of patients had their diagnosis missed by human examination of their MRI results. MRI and FDG-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET scans) were used to train the detector, with children separated into training and test cohorts. A separate group of adult scans were used for additional validation of the detector's performance. Using information from both MRI and PET scans, the best result was recorded in the test cohort with a success rate of 94%. Of the 17 children in the test group, 12 had surgery and 11 are now seizure free. About one in 200 children has epilepsy. Cortical dysplasias, which develop when the baby is still in the womb, are a common cause of drug-resistant seizures. "The seizures usually start out of the blue during the preschool or early school years before escalating to multiple times a day," Dr. Macdonald-Laurs said. "Children often need to attend the emergency department or be admitted to hospital for treatment. Over time, frequent seizures impact on a child's behavior, mood and ability to learn. "Epilepsy due to cortical dysplasia can, however, be improved or cured with epilepsy surgery if the abnormal brain tissue can be located and removed." But Dr. Macdonald-Laurs said cortical dysplasias were hard to spot on routine MRIs, with less than half being recognized on a child's first scan. "Cortical dysplasias can be impossible for traditional MRI techniques to identify," she said. "Failure to locate the abnormal tissue slows the pathway to a definitive diagnosis and may stop a child being referred for potentially curative epilepsy surgery. "The longer a child continues to have uncontrolled seizures, the more likely they are to develop learning difficulties, including intellectual disability." Dr. Macdonald-Laurs said with additional funding the team could test the detector in pediatric hospitals across Australia. Researchers from The Royal Children's Hospital, the University of Melbourne, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Harvard Medical School and the Austin Hospital also contributed to the study.

AI tool helps researchers treat child epilepsy

An artificial intelligence tool that can detect tiny, hard-to-spot brain malformations in children with epilepsy could help patients access life-changing surgery quicker, Australian researchers said on Wednesday. It is the latest example of how AI, which can crunch vast amounts of data, is changing health care by assisting doctors with diagnoses. Epilepsy has several different causes, and overall around three in 10 cases are down to structural abnormalities in the brain, experts say. These are often missed on MRI scans -- especially the smallest lesions, sometimes hidden at the bottom of a brain fold. A team led by Emma Macdonald-Laurs, a pediatric neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, trained an AI tool on child brain images to find lesions the size of a blueberry or smaller. "They're frequently missed and many children are not considered as surgical candidates," Macdonald-Laurs told a briefing ahead of the publication of her team's study in the journal Epilepsia. "The tool doesn't replace radiologists or epilepsy doctors, but it's like a detective that helps us put the puzzle pieces together quicker so we can offer potentially life-changing surgery," she said. Of the patients who took part, with conditions known as cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy, 80% had previously had an MRI scan come back as normal. When the researchers used the AI tool to analyze both MRI and another type of medical scan called a PET, its success rate was 94% for one test group and 91% for another. Out of 17 children in the first group, 12 had surgery to remove their brain lesions, and 11 are now seizure-free, said Macdonald-Laurs's team at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. "Our next plans are to test this detector in more real-life hospital settings on new undiagnosed patients," she said. Epilepsy, which causes recurrent seizures, affects about one in 200 children, and about a third of cases are drug-resistant. "This work is really exciting" as a proof of concept and the results are "really impressive", Konrad Wagstyl, a biomedical computing expert at King's College London (KCL), told AFP. Similar research published in February by a KCL team using AI on MRI data spotted 64% of epilepsy-linked brain lesions that were missed by radiologists. The Australian researchers used MRI with PET, "but some caveats are that PET is expensive, it's not as widely available as MRI, and there is a dose of radiation like a CT scan or an X-ray associated with it," Wagstyl noted.

AI tool helps researchers treat child epilepsy

Tokyo (AFP) - An artificial intelligence tool that can detect tiny, hard-to-spot brain malformations in children with epilepsy could help patients access life-changing surgery quicker, Australian researchers said on Wednesday. It is the latest example of how AI, which can crunch vast amounts of data, is changing healthcare by assisting doctors with diagnoses. Epilepsy has several different causes, and overall around three in 10 cases are down to structural abnormalities in the brain, experts say. These are often missed on MRI scans -- especially the smallest lesions, sometimes hidden at the bottom of a brain fold. A team led by Emma Macdonald-Laurs, a paediatric neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, trained an AI tool on child brain images to find lesions the size of a blueberry or smaller. "They're frequently missed and many children are not considered as surgical candidates," Macdonald-Laurs told a briefing ahead of the publication of her team's study in the journal Epilepsia. "The tool doesn't replace radiologists or epilepsy doctors, but it's like a detective that helps us put the puzzle pieces together quicker so we can offer potentially life-changing surgery," she said. Of the patients who took part, with conditions known as cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy, 80 percent had previously had an MRI scan come back as normal. When the researchers used the AI tool to analyse both MRI and another type of medical scan called a PET, its success rate was 94 percent for one test group and 91 percent for another. Out of 17 children in the first group, 12 had surgery to remove their brain lesions, and 11 are now seizure-free, said Macdonald-Laurs's team at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. "Our next plans are to test this detector in more real-life hospital settings on new undiagnosed patients," she said. Epilepsy, which causes recurrent seizures, affects about one in 200 children, and about a third of cases are drug-resistent. "This work is really exciting" as a proof of concept and the results are "really impressive", Konrad Wagstyl, a biomedical computing expert at King's College London (KCL), told AFP. Similar research published in February by a KCL team using AI on MRI data spotted 64 percent of epilepsy-linked brain lesions that were missed by radiologists. The Australian researchers used MRI with PET, "but some caveats are that PET is expensive, it's not as widely available as MRI, and there is a dose of radiation like a CT scan or an X-ray associated with it," Wagstyl noted.

AI tool helps researchers treat child epilepsy - The Economic Times

Australian researchers have developed an AI tool that helps spot tiny brain malformations in children with epilepsy, often missed in scans. This could speed up access to surgery. In trials, the tool identified hidden lesions in over 90% of cases, helping more children become seizure-free after surgery.An artificial intelligence tool that can detect tiny, hard-to-spot brain malformations in children with epilepsy could help patients access life-changing surgery quicker, Australian researchers said on Wednesday. It is the latest example of how AI, which can crunch vast amounts of data, is changing healthcare by assisting doctors with diagnoses. Epilepsy has several different causes, and overall around three in 10 cases are down to structural abnormalities in the brain, experts say. These are often missed on MRI scans -- especially the smallest lesions, sometimes hidden at the bottom of a brain fold. A team led by Emma Macdonald-Laurs, a paediatric neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, trained an AI tool on child brain images to find lesions the size of a blueberry or smaller. "They're frequently missed and many children are not considered as surgical candidates," Macdonald-Laurs told a briefing ahead of the publication of her team's study in the journal Epilepsia. "The tool doesn't replace radiologists or epilepsy doctors, but it's like a detective that helps us put the puzzle pieces together quicker so we can offer potentially life-changing surgery," she said. Of the patients who took part, with conditions known as cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy, 80% had previously had an MRI scan come back as normal. When the researchers used the AI tool to analyse both MRI and another type of medical scan called a PET, its success rate was 94% for one test group and 91% for another. Out of 17 children in the first group, 12 had surgery to remove their brain lesions, and 11 are now seizure-free, said Macdonald-Laurs's team at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. "Our next plans are to test this detector in more real-life hospital settings on new undiagnosed patients," she said. Epilepsy, which causes recurrent seizures, affects about one in 200 children, and about a third of cases are drug-resistent. "This work is really exciting" as a proof of concept and the results are "really impressive", Konrad Wagstyl, a biomedical computing expert at King's College London (KCL), told AFP. Similar research published in February by a KCL team using AI on MRI data spotted 64% of epilepsy-linked brain lesions that were missed by radiologists. The Australian researchers used MRI with PET, "but some caveats are that PET is expensive, it's not as widely available as MRI, and there is a dose of radiation like a CT scan or an X-ray associated with it," Wagstyl noted.