Determination of brain iron content in patients with Parkinson's disease using magnetic susceptibility imaging

To compare the phase radians in several cerebral regions between patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and control subjects, and to evaluate whether iron deposition quantified by susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) is related to the severity of motor symptoms of PD.

SWI consisted of both magnitude and phase images from a fully flow-compensated, 3-dimensional and gradient-echo (GRE) sequence. Magnitude and phase data were collected at GE HD 1.5T. The regions evaluated included frontal white matter, grey matter, cerebrospinal fluid, putamen, caudate nucleus (CN), substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc), substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr), and red nucleus (RN). A total number of 42 patients (12 patients without cognitive dysfunction, and 30 with cognitive dysfunction from mild to moderate degrees) and 30 control subjects were employed in the present study.

The phase radians of SNc, CN and RN in PD patients were lower than those in control subjects (P<0.05).

The phase radians can be used to estimate the brain iron deposition in PD patients, which may be helpful in the diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring of PD.