Summary of our success

Epilepsy is the most common serious brain disease, affecting over 450,000 people in the UK alone. Not all patients’ seizures are controlled by medication. Successful surgery can cure epilepsy, offering a life free from seizures, but without information on abnormalities within the brain to help pinpoint the cause of the epilepsy, surgeons can do little to help their patients.

Now, groundbreaking new ways of taking MRI scans of the brain, developed with funding from Action Medical Research, are offering the chance of a cure to more people with uncontrolled epilepsy. The novel ways of taking scans were developed by a team of expert researchers led by Professor John Duncan of University College London. The great advantage of the new MRI methods is that they provide detailed information on the brain’s structure, revealing abnormalities that conventional scans may miss. This enables surgeons to better pinpoint where seizures are likely to be coming from in more patients, meaning those patients can undergo life-changing surgery to potentially cure them of their seizures.