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The ‘Swallow Tail’ Appearance of the Healthy Nigrosome – A New Accurate Test of Parkinson's Disease: A Case-Control and Retrospective Cross-Sectional MRI Study at 3T

Schwarz, Stefan; Afzal, Mohammed; Morgan, Paul; Auer, Dorothee; Bajaj, Nin; Gowland, Penny A.

Authors

Stefan Schwarz

Mohammed Afzal

Paul Morgan

DOROTHEE AUER dorothee.auer@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Neuroimaging

Nin Bajaj



Contributors

Ashley I. Bush
Editor

Abstract

There is no well-established in vivo marker of nigral degeneration in Parkinson's disease (PD). An ideal imaging marker would directly mirror the loss of substantia nigra dopaminergic neurones, which is most prominent in sub-regions called nigrosomes. High-resolution, iron-sensitive, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 7T allows direct nigrosome-1 visualisation in healthy people but not in PD. Here, we investigated the feasibility of nigrosome-1 detection using 3T - susceptibility-weighted (SWI) MRI and the diagnostic accuracy that can be achieved for diagnosing PD in a clinical population. 114 high-resolution 3T - SWI-scans were reviewed consisting of a prospective case-control study in 19 subjects (10 PD, 9 controls) and a retrospective cross-sectional study in 95 consecutive patients undergoing routine clinical SWI-scans (>50 years, 9 PD, 81 non-PD, 5 non-diagnostic studies excluded). Two raters independently classified subjects into PD and non-PD according to absence or presence of nigrosome-1, followed by consensus reading. Diagnostic accuracy was assessed against clinical diagnosis as gold standard. Absolute inter- and intra-rater agreement was ≥94% (kappa≥0.82, p

Citation

Schwarz, S., Afzal, M., Morgan, P., Auer, D., Bajaj, N., & Gowland, P. A. (2014). The ‘Swallow Tail’ Appearance of the Healthy Nigrosome – A New Accurate Test of Parkinson's Disease: A Case-Control and Retrospective Cross-Sectional MRI Study at 3T. PLoS ONE, 9(4), Article e93814. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093814

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 6, 2014
Online Publication Date Apr 7, 2014
Publication Date Jan 1, 2014
Deposit Date Mar 22, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal PLoS ONE
Electronic ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Issue 4
Article Number e93814
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093814
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1096681
Publisher URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093814

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