Facilitating Diagnostics and Prognostics of Parkinsonian Syndromes Using Neuroimaging

Management of patients with parkinsonian symptoms has two critical gaps: (1) there are no clinically accepted biomarkers that may be used to inform disease progression rate in an individual with Parkinson disease (PD), and (2) no biomarkers exist to inform differential diagnosis of conditions that exhibit parkinsonian symptoms and signs. This 2-year study aims to develop a multi-modal neuroimaging biomarker that enables the prediction of disease progression rate in PD, and a biomarker that enables the differential diagnosis of PD, multiple systems atrophy (MSA), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and healthy controls. This study consists of two parts; neuroimaging of a defined population of mid to late stage PD subjects currently followed at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and recruitment of new subjects with PD, MSA, and PSP who will be followed clinically over 2 years and who will undergo neuroimaging. Participants will be asked to undergo several types of neuroimaging which will be analyzed using machine learning techniques. At each study visit of the newly recruited cohorts, appropriate clinical scales will be performed based on their diagnosis and used to track and measure disease severity and progression.