Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping of the Substantia Nigra in Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the sensitivities of quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and R2* mapping in clinical diagnoses of Parkinson’s disease (PD). QSM images and R2* maps from 29 patients with PD and 25 healthy controls were obtained on a clinical 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system using a three-dimensional multi-echo gradient-echo sequence. Two-tailed t tests and receiver operating characteristic curves analyses were applied to the mean values of QSM and R2* of the two groups. In the PD group, a two-tailed Pearson correlation analysis was used to investigate the correlations between MRI measures (susceptibility and R2* values) and the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale-III (UPDRS-III) score. In the substantia nigra (SN), a significant difference between patients with PD and healthy controls was found on QSM (154.80 ± 43.36 vs. 127.50 ± 21.05 ppb, P = 0.006) but not on R2* mapping. The receiver operating characteristic curves showed that QSM was more sensitive than R2* mapping to distinguish PD patients from healthy controls, with areas under the curve equal to 0.68 and 0.51, respectively. The UPDRS-III motor scores did not correlate with mean susceptibility or R2* values in the PD group. In conclusion, QSM is a more accurate and sensitive method than R2* mapping to detect the pathologic changes in the SN of patients with PD.