Combining MR Fingerprinting with Voxel-based Morphometric MRI Analysis to Reduce False Positives for Focal Cortical Dysplasia Detection

We sought to improve focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) lesion detection by combining MR fingerprinting (MRF) with voxel-based morphometric MRI analysis. We acquired high-resolution MRF and T1w MPRAGE data from 29 patients and 47 age-and-gender-matched healthy controls. FCD probability maps were generated using the morphometric analysis program (MAP18). MRF T1 and T2 values in white matter were significantly higher in true-positive clusters than false-positive clusters. Using normalized MRF T1, T2, and cluster size as input, an SVM model was able to predict whether each cluster represents a true positive with high accuracy, demonstrating its potential contribution to clinical FCD detection workflow.