MR image texture in Parkinson's disease: a longitudinal study.

Background: Few of the structural changes caused by Parkinson's disease (PD) are visible in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with visual inspection but there is a need for a method capable of observing the changes beyond the human eye. Texture analysis offers a technique that enables the quantification of the image gray-level patterns.

Purpose: To investigate the value of quantitative image texture analysis method in diagnosis and follow-up of PD patients.