/GD-TRACKER/ A SOFTWARE FOR BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER PERMEABILITY ASSESSMENT

Epilepsy is chronic neurological disease characterized by occurrence of spontaneous recurrent seizures affecting approximately 1% of people. One of the most common causes of epilepsy in adults is a stroke. The precise mechanism of development of vascular epilepsy is not known, and thus no reliable biomarker of postischemic epileptogenesis currently exists. Blood-brain barrier (BBB) impairment is phenomenon observed in several pathologies including stroke after which epilepsy often develops. Blood components such as albumin or thrombin have been experimentally shown to possess the capacity to increase excitability which results in seizures and epileptogenesis. We hypothesize that severity of the BBB breakdown during first weeks after the stroke can be used as a biomarker of postischemic epileptogenesis. This paper describes free MATLAB based software /Gd-Tracker/ and methodology developed for assessment of BBB permeability from magnetic resonance (MR) scans based on statistical voxel to voxel comparison of sequences with and without Gd-DTPA contrast. This software allows to evaluate extent and magnitude of impaired BBB region and thus serve as a tool for visualization and quantification of BBB breakdown