This study aimed to evaluate whether novel individual voxel-based morphometry adjusting covariates (iVAC), such as age, sex, and total intracranial volume, could increase the accuracy of a diagnosis of multiple system atrophy (MSA) and enable the differentiation of MSA from Parkinson’s disease (PD).
We included 53 MSA patients (MSA-C: 33, MSA-P: 20), 53 PD patients, and 189 healthy controls in this study. All participants underwent high-resolution T1-weighted imaging (WI) and T2-WI with a 3.0-T MRI scanner. We evaluated the occurrence of significant atrophic findings in the pons/middle cerebellar peduncle (MCP) and putamen on iVAC and compared these findings with characteristic changes on T2-WI.
On iVAC, abnormal findings were observed in the pons/MCP of 96.2% of MSA patients and in the putamen of 80% of MSA patients; however, on T2-WI, they were both observed at a frequency of 60.4% in MSA patients. On iVAC, all but one MSA-P patient (98.1%) showed significant atrophic changes in the pons/MCP or putamen. By contrast, 69.8% of patients with MSA showed abnormal signal changes in the pons/MCP or putamen on T2-WI. iVAC yielded 95.0% sensitivity and 96.2% specificity for differentiating MSA-P from PD.
iVAC enabled us to recognize the morphological characteristics of MSA visually and with high accuracy compared to T2-WI, indicating that iVAC is a potential diagnostic screening tool for MSA.
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
About The Expert
Junya Ebina
Kazuhiro Hara
Hirohisa Watanabe
Kazuya Kawabata
Fumio Yamashita
Atsushi Kawaguchi
Yusuke Yoshida
Toshiyasu Kato
Aya Ogura
Michihito Masuda
Reiko Ohdake
Daisuke Mori
Satoshi Maesawa
Masahisa Katsuno
Osamu Kano
Gen Sobue
References
PubMed