VEP atlas: An anatomic and functional human brain atlas dedicated to epilepsy patients

Background: Several automated parcellation atlases of the human brain have been developed over the past decades, based on various criteria, and have been applied in basic and clinical research. New method: : Here we present the Virtual Epileptic Patient (VEP) atlas that offers a new automated brain region parcellation and labeling, which has been developed for the specific use in the domains of epileptology and functional neurosurgery and is able to apply at individual patient's level. Results: It comprises 162 brain regions, including 73 cortical and 8 subcortical regions per hemisphere. We demonstrate the successful application of the VEP atlas in a cohort of 50 retrospective patients. The structural organization is complemented by the functional variation of stereotactic intracerebral EEG (SEEG) signal data features establishing brain region-specific 3d-maps. Comparison with existing methods: The VEP atlas integrates both anatomical and functional definitions in the same atlas, adapted to applications for epilepsy patients and individualizable. Conclusion: The covariation of structural and functional organization is the basis for current efforts of patient-specific large-scale brain network modeling exploiting virtual brain technologies for the identification of the epileptogenic regions in an ongoing prospective clinical trial EPINOV.