Chapter 3 - Motor Parkinson's disease and structure

Summary

This chapter reviews magnetic resonance (MR) techniques from conventional structural MRI to advanced MRI (volumetry, magnetization transfer (MT), neuromelanin imaging, diffusion imaging, and rs-fMRI). It outlines the ways in which these techniques may be used to detect changes in the brain of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and their relationships with Parkinsonian symptoms. Functional connectivity (FC) methods that take advantage of intrinsic signal fluctuations have demonstrated that the interactions of brain networks are abnormal in PD at the resting state. MRI has proven useful in the differential diagnosis of the various atypical Parkinsonian disorders such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and the Parkinson variant of multiple system atrophy (MSA-P). In PD, changes in the basal ganglia and brainstem are subtle and restricted to nuclei such as the substantia nigra (SN) and locus coeruleus (LC). PSP patients present extensive changes in the brainstem, basal ganglia, and cortical regions.