Anatomically vs. eLectrophysIologically Guided Contact SelectioN in Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease (ALIGN-PD): Study Protocol for a Randomized Double-blind Crossover Trial – submitted to Trials Journal on the 13th of October 2025

This is a preprint of the studyprotocol for Anatomically vs. eLectrophysIologically Guided Contact SelectioN in Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson’s Disease (ALIGN-PD): Study Protocol for a Randomized Double-blind Crossover Trial – submitted to Trials Journal on the 13th of October 2025 Names of protocol contributors {3a} Herstell S,¹* Schedlich-Teufer C,¹* Van der Linden C,¹ Jergas H,¹ Prümm B,¹ Visser-Vandewalle V,² Strelow J,¹ Thies T,¹ Petry-Schmelzer JN,¹ Dembek TA,¹ Brandt GA,3 Barbe MT¹ 1 University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Department of Neurology, Cologne, Germany 2 University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Department of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Cologne, Germany 3 Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Department of Neurology with Experimental Neurology, Berlin, Germany