Early-stage Parkinson's disease: Abnormal nigrosome 1 and 2 revealed by a voxelwise analysis of neuromelanin-sensitive MRI.

Previous pathologic studies evaluated the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) of a limited number of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) patients with relatively longer disease durations. Therefore, it remains unknown which region of the SNpc is most significantly affected in early-stage IPD. We hypothesized that a voxelwise analysis of thin-section neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI) may help determine the significantly affected regions of the SNpc in early-stage IPD and localize these areas in each nigrosome on high-spatial-resolution susceptibility map-weighted imaging (SMwI). Ninety-six healthy subjects and 50 early-stage IPD patients underwent both a 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.8 mm3 NM-MRI and a 0.5 × 0.5 × 1.0 mm3 multi-echo gradient-recalled echo imaging for SMwI. Both NM-MRI and SMwI templates were created by using image data from the 96 healthy subjects. Permutation-based nonparametric tests were conducted to investigate spatial differences between the two groups in NM-MRI, and the results were displayed on both NM-MRI and SMwI templates. The posterolateral and anteromedial regions of the SNpc in NM-MRI were significantly different between the two groups, corresponding to the nigrosome 1 and nigrosome 2 regions, respectively, on the SMwI template. There were the areas of significant spatial difference in the hypointense SN on SMwI between early-stage IPD patients and healthy subjects. These areas on SMwI were slightly greater than those on NM-MRI, including the areas showing group difference on NM-MRI. Our voxelwise analysis of NM-MRI suggests that two regions (nigrosome 1 and nigrosome 2) of the SNpc are separately affected in early-stage IPD.