For many patients, epileptic seizures can be controlled by drugs, but almost one-third of patients do not respond to medication. For this group, surgical removal of the epileptogenic zone presents the only treatment option.  An innovative approach to use advanced brain modelling methods for epilepsy clinical care combines the multilevel human brain atlas of the European digital research infrastructure EBRAINS and the simulation technology “The Virtual Brain” (TVB). TVB allows to create personalized brain models from patient-specific in-vivo measurements of anatomy, structural connectivity and brain dynamics. The multilevel brain atlas enables to enrich this data with detailed information about the organizational principles of the brain, including the heterogenous regional composition of cells, fibres and molecular parameters, and the variability of anatomy and connectivity across individuals. The technology enables clinicians to better identify and characterize target areas for surgery. Scientists of Forschungszentrum Jülich, Aix-Marseille University and University Hospital Düsseldorf are pushing forward research on the clinical integration, which implies the local installation of a toolsuite for offline use of the relevant atlas data, the coupling of these data types with the TVB simulation engine, and the setup of simulation models putting together patient-specific measurements and anatomical constraints from the atlas.

EDITH partner Forschungszentrum Jülich is participating with two groups: the Institute of Structural and Functional Organisation of the Brain, which contributes its experience with brain atlases and the coupling of these atlases to multi-scale models, and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), which contributes to the simulation platform and the federated repository.