Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by neuronal loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). This study aims to gain deeper insights into the abnormalities in SN by evaluating the diffusion metrics of the SN in a large cohort of patients with PD. To precisely delineate the SN, neuromelanin sensitive MRI images were obtained from a set of healthy controls and were used to create a probabilistic atlas of the SN. Using this atlas, we observed significantly higher radial and mean diffusivity of bilateral SN in patients with PD suggesting microstructural abnormalities that could potentially serve as bio-markers for PD.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.