The TRACK-PD study: protocol of a longitudinal ultra-high field imaging study in Parkinson’s disease

The diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) remains a challenge and is currently based on the assessment of clinical symptoms. PD is also a heterogeneous disease with great variability in symptoms, disease course, and response to therapy. There is a general need for a better understanding of this heterogeneity and the interlinked long-term changes in brain function and structure in PD. Over the past years there is increasing interest in the value of new paradigms in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and the potential of ultra-high field strength imaging in the diagnostic work-up of PD. With this multimodal 7 T MRI study, our objectives are: 1) To identify distinctive MRI characteristics in PD patients and to create a diagnostic tool based on these differences. 2) To correlate MRI characteristics to clinical phenotype, genetics and progression of symptoms. 3) To detect future imaging biomarkers for disease progression that could be valuable for the evaluation of new therapies.