The role of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging in Parkinson's disease and in the differential diagnosis with atypical parkinsonism

Abstract

Parkinson's disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases. Clinically, it is characterized by motor symptoms. Parkinson's disease should be differentiated from atypical parkinsonism conditions. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging is the primary imaging method employed in order to facilitate the differential diagnosis, and its role has grown after the development of advanced techniques such as diffusion-weighted imaging. The purpose of this article was to review the role of magnetic resonance imaging in Parkinson's disease and in the differential diagnosis with atypical parkinsonism, emphasizing the diffusion technique.

Alterations in white matter network topology contribute to freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease

“…Another possible weakness of this study's methodology is that the Louvain algorithm does not allow for overlapping modules, as a node is only assigned to one community. Furthermore, although DTI is an established method for measuring white matter integrity and has led to great insights in PD [57,58], it suffers from inherent limitations. Specifically, diffusion imaging measures the motion of water molecules along a tract and thus only allows for indirect validation of streamlines.…”

Recent advances in using diffusion tensor imaging to study white matter alterations in Parkinson’s disease: A mini review

“…DTI can characterize structural changes related to PD as the disease progresses over time so it can be a promising biomarker for monitoring PD progression. It also has the potential for making a more sensitive and specific differential diagnosis between PD and atypical parkinsonism, such as MSA and PSP (de Oliveira and Pereira, 2017). DTI also sheds light on the underlying structural network affected in different subtypes of PD (PD-T vs. PD-PIGD), which can help future interventional studies offering optimized treatment to various subtypes (e.g., treating PD-PIGD patients, in the de novo stage with the impaired cholinergic white matter projections as a proxy of cholinergic denervation with the novel DBS techniques being developed to increase cholinergic modulation).…”

Parkinson's disease and atypical parkinsonism: the importance of magnetic resonance imaging as a potential biomarker

“…The excellent review article by Oliveira et al ( 12 ) published in this issue of Radiologia Brasileira , addresses precisely the value of MRI diffusion techniques in the evaluation of Parkinson's disease and in its differential diagnosis with atypical parkinsonism. That review demonstrates the true potential of those techniques to reveal biomarkers of this important neurodegenerative disease, the prevalence of which is on the rise in the context of the aging of the world's population.…”