Voxeloc: A time-saving graphical user interface for localizing and visualizing stereo-EEG electrodes

Abstract

Background: Thanks to its unrivalled spatial and temporal resolutions and signal-to-noise ratio, intracranial EEG (iEEG) is becoming a valuable tool in neuroscience research. To attribute functional properties to cortical tissue, it is paramount to be able to determine precisely the localization of each electrode with respect to a patient's brain anatomy. Several software packages or pipelines offer the possibility to localize manually or semi-automatically iEEG electrodes. However, their reliability and ease of use may leave to be desired.

New method: Voxeloc (voxel electrode locator) is a Matlab-based graphical user interface to localize and visualize stereo-EEG electrodes. Voxeloc adopts a semi-automated approach to determine the coordinates of each electrode contact, the user only needing to indicate the deep-most contact of each electrode shaft and another point more proximally.

Results: With a deliberately streamlined functionality and intuitive graphical user interface, the main advantages of Voxeloc are ease of use and inter-user reliability. Additionally, oblique slices along the shaft of each electrode can be generated to facilitate the precise localization of each contact. Voxeloc is open-source software and is compatible with the open iEEG-BIDS (Brain Imaging Data Structure) format.

Comparison with existing methods: Localizing full patients' iEEG implants was faster using Voxeloc than two comparable software packages, and the inter-user agreement was better.

Conclusions: Voxeloc offers an easy-to-use and reliable tool to localize and visualize stereo-EEG electrodes. This will contribute to democratizing neuroscience research using iEEG.

Keywords: Electrode localization; Electrode visualization; Epilepsy surgery; FreeSurfer; Graphical user interface; Intracranial EEG; Matlab; Stereo-EEG.