Differential Diagnosis Between Parkinson's Disease and Essential Tremor with Neuromelanin Imaging of the Substantia Nigra and Locus Coeruleus

In this study, we used neuromelanin MRI to investigate locus coeruleus (LC) and substantia nigra changes between essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). We found the neuromelanin of LC was significantly lower in tremor-dominant PD patients than in ET patients or healthy controls, and the area under the curve of the model constructed by NM measures reached 0.92 in differentiating tremor-dominant PD from ET. These results provided new perspectives in the differential diagnosis of patients with tremor and in the investigation of the underlying pathophysiology.