Multidelay Pseudocontinous Arterial Spin Labeling MRI To Understand Mild Cognitive Impairment in Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease

Motivation: Reliance on neuropsychological testing for diagnosing Parkinson's disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) is limited by expert availability. Understanding brain correlates with cognitive impairments may provide alternative diagnostic tools to better understand PD-MCI. Goal(s): Determine whether arterial transit time (ATT) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) can distinguish PD-MCI from PD with normal cognition (PD-NC). Approach: A cross-sectional study compared ATT and CBF across PD-MCI, PD-NC, MCI, and healthy controls (HC) and analyzed correlations with clinical variables. Results: Higher ATT and lower CBF were observed in PD-MCI that correlated significantly with clinical scores suggesting potential for fMRI-based diagnosis of PD-MCI. Impact: This study demonstrates the potential of ATT and CBF as neuroimaging biomarkers for diagnosing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in Parkinson's disease (PD). These findings highlight the promise of ATT and CBF in enabling early and accurate cognitive assessment of PD-MCI.