Contribution of 'susceptibility weighted imaging' sequence in magnetic resonans imaging of Parkinson's disease patients to diagnosis

Background and purpose: Parkinson disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer disease and it is seen in 2 % of the population older than 60 years of age. In neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson diseaese and with advancing age iron content in basal ganglia of the brain increases. In the present study the contribution of susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) to the diagnosis of Parkinson disease was evaluated by investigating iron deposition in the basal ganglia of Parkinson disease patients. Materials and methods: 35 patients who had a clinical diagnosis of Parkinson disease and 19 patients with a diagnosis of headache from the neurology clinic of our hospital from a similar age group were selected. Magnetic resonance images of the patients were compared retrospectively with the images obtained from the control group. Demographic data, disease duration, age of first diagnosis and Parkinson clinical scores of the patients were recorded. Intensity measurements of the basal ganglia were obtained in SWI sequence. To make a quantitative analysis signal-noice ratio (SNR) was calculated from obtained measurements. Results: SNR results obtained from the basal ganglia with SWI sequence were significantly lower in the patient group compared with that from the control group (p<0,05). There was no corelation within the patient group between clinical score, disease duration, patients? age of first diagnosis and SNR results (p>0,05). Conclusion: SWI sequence of magnetic resonance imaging may be used as supporting method for the diagnosis of Parkinson disease but it was not found very helpful in evaluating clinical severity, side of involvement and progression of the disease. Key words: Iron, magnetic resonance imaging, Parkinson disease, SWI