Sunday, November 26 | 1:00 p.m.-1:10 p.m. | S4-SSNR02-1 | Room E352
In this scientific session, researchers will share how MRI volumetric analysis based on a deep-learning segmentation algorithm can help clinicians assess intracranial and white-matter volumes in Parkinson's disease patients.
And men show brain changes due to Parkinson's more than women, according to a team led by presenter Nikhil Gupta, MD, of Tirath Ram Shah Hospital in Delhi, India.
"[We found that] Parkinson's disease patients … have larger intracranial volume compared to controls … [as well as] white-matter atrophy," the group noted.
Previous research has shown that Parkinson's disease prompts structural changes in subcortical brain volumes. Gupta and colleagues sought to evaluate the ability of an MRI technique -- volumetric analysis based on a deep-learning segmentation -- to characterize volumetric abnormalities in patients with Parkinson's disease compared with controls.
The study included 100 patients with Parkinson's and 100 without the disease who had undergone 3D T1-weighted MR imaging. The team used InMed Prognostics' euroShield deep-learning algorithm to segment and compute intracranial, white-matter, and gray-matter volumes and the volume of deep gray-matter structures.
The investigators found no significant differences in gray-matter or deep gray-matter volumes between the two groups, but intracranial volume was significantly higher in Parkinson's patients compared with controls (p = 0.01), a difference that was significant in men only (p = 0.002). The group also found that white-matter volume was significantly lower in Parkinson's patients compared to controls (p= 0.03), which was again only significant among men (p = 0.02).
"Further studies are needed to better understand underlying mechanisms of these gender-specific volumetric abnormalities," the researchers concluded.
