Effects of Parkinson’s disease on mechanical and microstructural properties of the brain

Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) is a novel technique to study the brain by measuring its mechanical properties, such as stiffness and viscosity. These properties may provide insights into how the microstructure of the brain changes due to a pathology, however the connection between these microstructural mechanisms and the measured biomechanical properties are still largely unknown. For this reason, the present exploratory study utilizes multidimensional diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MD-dMRI), apart from MRE, to extract microstructural parameters of the whole brain tissue for a small cohort of 12 Parkinson disease (PD) patients and 17 healthy controls. A combination of these methods provides valuable insights into subtle changes due to PD as it probes variables such as microscopic fractional anisotropy (μFA) combined with measures of shear stiffness. MRE and MD-dMRI quantities across the brain are compared between the two groups and analyzed. It was found that there were significant softening effects in the temporal and occipital lobes due to PD, associated with an increase in the mean diffusivity in those regions, whereas other microstructural properties remained largely unchanged. The mesencephalon, on the other hand, displays changes in the MD-dMRI parameters consistent with neuronal atrophy, however no softening of this region was detected. In most regions, stiffness is significantly reduced due to age, which is correlated with a decrease in μFA and increase in MD. We hypothesize that age effects can mostly explain neuronal atrophy, whereas softening due to PD effects involve additional mechanisms.