Cerebral Microstructural Alterations in Patients With Early Parkinson's Disease Detected With Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Measurements.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the elderly. In early stages of PD, patients typically display normal brain magnet resonance imaging (MRI) in routine screening. Advanced imaging approaches are necessary to discriminate early PD patients from healthy controls.

Alterations of Striato-Thalamic Metabolism in Normal Aging Human Brain-An MR Metabolic Imaging Study.

Aging effects on striato-thalamic metabolism in healthy human brains were studied in vivo using short-TE whole brain H-MR spectroscopic imaging (wbMRSI) on eighty healthy subjects aged evenly between 20 to 70 years at 3T. Relative concentrations of N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA), choline, total creatine (tCr), myo-inositol (mI), glutamate, and glutamine in bilateral caudate nucleus, putamen, pallidum, and thalamus were determined using signal normalization relative to brain tissue water. Linear regression analysis was used to analyze the age-dependence of the metabolite concentrations.