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

作者：Xiaobo Wei, Ronghua Yan, Kai Chen, Ruihui Weng, Xu Liu, Huimin Gao, Xiaofeng Xu, Zhuang Kang, Zhexing Liu, Yan Guo, Zhenhua Liu, Jan Petter Larsen, Jin Wang, Beisha Tang, Mark Hallett, Qing Wang · 发表于：Scientific Reports · 年份：2016 · DOI：10.1038/srep33762 · 被引用次数：38 · 研究领域：Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications、Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments、Neurological disorders and treatments

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-SNAv), CBF in the PFC(CBF-PFCAv) and FA in the parietal white matter(FA-PWMAv), 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-SNAv, CBF-PFCAv and FA-PWMAv values might serve as potential markers of early-stage PD.