Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) has developed into a new treatment modality for drug resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Compared to the previous standard Anterior Temporal Lobectomy (ATL), LITT is minimally invasive, has fewer surgical and cognitive risks, and offers a decreased recovery time. However, ATL provides confirmation that all epileptic tissue was removed and the characterization of hippocampal pathology. Both are critical factors in determining if a patient will be seizure free decades after the procedure. The LITT procedure consists of guiding a water-cooled catheter to the hippocampus through a small hole in the brain, inserting a laser through the catheter, and then ablating the tissue. The minimally invasive nature of LITT makes it more difficult to identify if enough tissue has been ablated, and impossible to determine pathology. Without ablating all the required tissue, there is no guarantee the patient will be seizure free immediately following surgery. A lack of pathological information makes it more challenging to prescribe effective treatment and increases the chance seizures will redevelop in the years following surgery. Neurologists and neurosurgeons need a detailed pathological diagnosis and tissue characterization around the laser catheter before/after ablation in order to increase effectiveness of post-surgery epilepsy management and treatment. Our goal is to provide these critical factors without affecting the quality of the LITT procedure by using Optical Coherence Tomography, pre-ablation, to provide an accurate location of the catheter and characterize the pathology of the diseased hippocampus.

Team Members

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Project Mentors, Sponsors, and Partners

• Dr. William Anderson (Clinical Mentor)

• Dr. Nicholas Durr (BME Mentor)

• Aditya Bhide (TA)

• Dr. David Nauen (Committee Mentor)

• Dr. Joon Kang (Committee Mentor)

• Dr. Xingde Li (Committee Mentor)

• Hyeoncheol Park (Committee Mentor)

Course Faculty

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Project Links

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Additional Project Information