Multispectral 7 Tesla MRI as a potential predictor of dopamine transporter deficiency in Parkinson’s Disease

The neuropathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra resulting in a reduced striatal dopamine transporter (DaT) concentration. Radioligands can detect degeneration of nigrostriatal projections early in the disease course, but their clinical use is constrained by ionizing radiation exposure and the need for radiotracer production and associated logistics. In this study, we investigate whether a healthy DaT atlas can be predicted directly from native 7 Tesla (7T) multicontrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using a normative atlas as the supervised target for voxel-wise DaT density. Based on these results, we estimate the deviation of sporadic PD patients from the normative DaT atlas. Using this approach, we found that estimated DaT distributions in the putamen differ between PD patients and healthy controls, providing preliminary evidence that high-field advanced multispectral MRI could inform on neurochemical alterations in PD.