title: High-resolution quantitative imaging of the substantia nigra.
abstract: There is a growing interest in identifying neuroimaging-based biomarkers for Parkinson's disease (PD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder in which the major pathologic substrate is the loss of pigmented dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). Recently, an MRI technique dubbed "neuromelanin-sensitive MRI" (NM-MRI), has been found to provide notable contrast between the SN and surrounding brain tissues with potential applications as biomarker of PD. The contrast in NM-MRI has been associated with magnetization transfer (MT) effects, and thus the goal of this study was to characterize the impact of MT on NM-MRI, and to demonstrate the feasibility of performing quantitative MT (qMT) imaging in human SN. The results of this study demonstrate that high-resolution rapid qMT imaging of the SN can be reliably obtained within reasonable scan times, thereby can be translatable into clinical practice.
authors.forename: Paula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Trujillo
authors.forename: Alex K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Paul E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Summers
authors.forename: Luca M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Mainardi
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cerutti
authors.forename: Seth A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Costa
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D060328:Magnetic Phenomena; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008543:Melanins / Q000378:metabolism; D008875:Middle Aged; D059906:Neuroimaging; D013378:Substantia Nigra / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D008543:Melanins; C014121:neuromelanin