number of standard deviations of the range of pixel values in the normalized z score image 22 by applying this threshold in step 24 regions of interest 27 exceeding the defined threshold are delineated in a delineated image 26 in a final method step 28 each of the delineated regions of interest 27 identified in the delineated image 26 is compared to the corresponding region of the ictal image 10 for each region of interest the corresponding region of the ictal image 10 is analyzed to detect a local maximum if a local maximum is present in the corresponding region of the ictal image 10 the region of interest 27 is confirmed as a candidate focus region and identified as such in a final image 30 if no local maximum is present in the corresponding region of the ictal image 10 the region of interest 27 is rejected as a candidate focus region and not identified as a candidate focus in the final image 30 variations of the method are possible as will be recognized by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the present invention for example the method of the invention may be employed with images captured using other modalities such as pet and or using different tracers the method of the present invention may be applied for follow up studies where there already exists a scan image for a particular patient that can be considered as a baseline and another as an intervention scan typically a newly captured image optionally the baseline and intervention images may be smoothed prior to the subtraction step 18 when the regions of interest 27 are propagated from the delineated normalized difference image 26 to the intervention ictal image 10 other statistics.