[Susceptibility-weighted imaging in detecting brain iron accumulation of Parkinson's disease].

OBJECTIVE: to evaluate the clinical value of susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) in the measurement of brain iron in Parkinson's disease at 3.0 Tesla MRI. METHODS: a total of 30 patients with clinical diagnosis Parkinson's Disease (PD) and 19 age-matched normal controls took the brain MR examination with conventional and SWI sequences. PD patients were classified into two groups according to I-IV stage (Hoehn-Yahr) and disease duration (≤ 5 year, > 5 year) respectively. Region of interest (ROI) were handed drawn on phase images, including putamen (PUT), globus pallidus (GP), caudate nucleus (CN), substantia nigra (SN), and red nucleus (RN), and corresponding signals and phase values were measured. Two-sample t-test was used for comparison between patients groups and normal controls. P values of < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: the mean phase values of SN (P = 0.01), GP (P < 0.01) in PD group was significantly different from those in normal controls. However, PUT, CN and RN had no significant differences between patient group and normal controls. Phase values of SN in Hoehn-Yahr III-IV was significantly different from those I-II (P = 0.000), (did not correlated with disease duration). Using phase value of -0.11 as the threshold value, the sensitivity of diagnosis of PD was 60.0% (18/30), the specificity was 57.9% (11/19), the accuracy was 59.2% (29/49). CONCLUSIONS: SWI provided a non-invasive semi-quantitative method for iron deposition study in PD and it may help us to trace the iron development in PD.