Combined Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Arterial Spin Labeling as Markers of Early Parkinson’s disease

• Published in: Scientific reports 2016-09, Vol.6 (1), p.33762-33762, Article 33762
• Main Authors: Wei, Xiaobo, Yan, Ronghua, Chen, Zhaoyu, Weng, Ruihui, Liu, Xu, Gao, Huimin, Xu, Xiaofeng, Kang, Zhuang, Liu, Zhexing, Guo, Yan, Liu, Zhenhua, Larsen, Jan Petter, Wang, Jin, Tang, Beisha, Hallett, Mark, Wang, Qing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 59/36; 59/57; 692/53/2421; 692/617/375; Anisotropy; Blood flow; Caudate nucleus; Cerebral blood flow; Cognition; Diffusion coefficient; Hip; Humanities and Social Sciences; Magnetic resonance imaging; Mood; Motor task performance; Movement disorders; multidisciplinary; Neurodegenerative diseases; Neuroimaging; Nuclei; Parkinson's disease; Prefrontal cortex; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Spin labeling; Substantia alba
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep33762

This study aimed to identify a PD-specific MRI pattern using combined diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and arterial spin labeling (ASL) to discriminate patients with early PD from healthy subjects and evaluate disease status. Twenty-one early and 22 mid-late PD patients, and 22 healthy, age/gender-matched controls underwent 3-T MRI with apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), fractional anisotropy (FA), fiber number (FN) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) measurements. We found that compared with healthy subjects, there was a profound reduction in FN passing through the SN in PD. FA in the SN and CBF in the caudate nucleus were inversely correlated with motor dysfunction. A negative correlation was observed between FA in the hippocampus (Hip) and the NMSS-Mood score, whereas CBF in the Hip and the prefrontal cortex(PFC) correlated with declined cognition. Stratified five-fold cross-validation identified FA in the SN(FA-SN A v ), CBF in the PFC(CBF-PFC Av ) and FA in the parietal white matter(FA-PWM Av ), and the combination of these measurements offered relatively high accuracy (AUC 0.975, 90% sensitivity and 100% specificity) in distinguishing those with early PD from healthy subjects. We demonstrate that the decreased FNs through SN in combination with changes in FA-SN Av , CBF-PFC Av and FA-PWM Av values might serve as potential markers of early-stage PD.