QSM in Patients with Movement Disorders: Neuroradiological Evaluation of Offline and Inline Pipelines for Clinical Use

Motivation: QSM could assist with diagnosing movement disorders but has not yet been fully integrated into routine clinical practice. Goal(s): Evaluate the visibility of deep brain structures in patients with movement disorders using established offline in-house (Auto-NDI) and vendor-provided inline research (TGV+) QSM pipelines. Approach: Thorough neuroradiological assessment of QSM maps from two healthy controls and ten patients with movement disorders, acquired using a multi-echo 3D-gradient-echo sequence in a clinically acceptable scan time. Results: Visualisation of deep brain structures is achievable in patients with movement disorders using different QSM pipelines. The inline pipeline was more robust to motion but accentuated artefacts masking particular structures. Impact: Clinically robust QSM can be achieved using multi-echo 3D-GRE sequence within a clinically acceptable scan time using offline and inline pipelines. This confirms the feasibility of using inline QSM for potential routine clinical neuroradiological evaluation of patients with movement disorders.