Bibliographic survey on the clinical application of magnetoencephalography (I): epilepsy

Abstract

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was approved as an examination covered by health insurance in 2004, but the scientific evidence is not necessarily clear. In this study, we reviewed clinical MEG studies regarding epilepsy based on a website bibliographic survey. We searched epilepsy papers before July 2010 using MEDLINE by keywords: epilepsy AND (MEG OR magnetoencephalography OR (magnetic source imaging)). Nine hundred sixty-one papers were retrieved. We further narrowed the search to 65 papers based on levels of evidence and abstract contents. The levels of evidences were classified as grade 1: no paper, 2: 3 papers, 3: 20 papers, 4: 22 papers, 5: 14 papers, 6: 6 papers, respectively. Most of the papers reported clinical usefulness of MEG. Several papers certified the high levels of evidences that MEG is superior to scalp electroencephalography to estimate epileptic foci and to decide the placement site and area of intracranial electrodes. Although the present indication of health insurance for MEG is restricted to presurgical evaluation for the surgical cases, it should cover usefulness of the MEG evaluation for surgical indication.