Diagnosing Parkinson’s disease by Combining Neuromelanin and Iron Image Features Using Automatic SN Subregions Detection Approach

A total of 100 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and 100 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) were scanned using a single 3D gradient echo magnetization transfer sequence. We developed an automatic substantia nigra (SN) subregions segmentation approach to get neuromelanin (NM) and iron measurements in the SN. These measures along with their overlap region volume and the nigrosome-1 (N1) sign showed reliable results indicative of promising diagnostic biomarkers to differentiate PD patients from HCs.