A computer-implemented apparatus for predicting an effect of a proposed surgical strategy for treatment of epilepsy and/or epileptic seizures, the apparatus comprising: a device configured to generate a brain network model representative of brain data, wherein nodes in the network model correspond to brain regions of said brain data and connections between the nodes of the network model correspond to structural and/or functional connections between the brain regions; a device configured to generate synthetic brain activity data in at least some of the nodes of the network model; a device configured to compute a representative brain network ictogenicity (BNI) value from the synthetic brain activity data, wherein said BNI value is representative of a probability of said brain network to generate seizures; a device configured to, repeatedly: a) simulate or effect a surgical strategy comprising removal of at least one node and/or edge from said brain network and subsequently recalculate said BNI value thereof; and b) calculate a value ΔΒΝΙ representative of a magnitude of change in BNI following removal of said at least one node/edge from said brain network, wherein said ΔΒΝΙ value is indicative of an effectiveness of removal of said at least one node/edge from said brain network in reducing said probability of said brain network to generate seizures; thereby to output multiple ΔΒΝΙ values, or data representative thereof, corresponding to respective multiple proposed surgical strategies, each comprising removal of respective nodes/edges or sets of nodes/edges from said brain network.
COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PREDICTING PERFORMANCE OF SURGICAL STRATEGIES