Reproducibility assessment of neuromelanin-sensitive magnetic resonance imaging protocols for region-of-interest and voxelwise analyses.

ABSTRACT: Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI) provides a noninvasive measure of the content of neuromelanin (NM), a product of dopamine metabolism that accumulates with age in dopamine neurons of the substantia nigra (SN). NM-MRI has been validated as a measure of both dopamine neuron loss, with applications in neurodegenerative disease, and dopamine function, with applications in psychiatric disease. Furthermore, a voxelwise-analysis approach has been validated to resolve substructures, such as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), within midbrain dopaminergic nuclei thought to have distinct anatomical targets and functional roles. NM-MRI is thus a promising tool that could have diverse research and clinical applications to noninvasively interrogate in vivo the dopamine system in neuropsychiatric illne

SUBMITTER: Wengler K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7118586 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature