Imaging in

Parkinson's Disease

Bridge between brain pathology

and clinical symptoms -
Quantitative assessment of DA
loss.
Repeated assessment
Identify DA loss prior to
symptoms.
 Functional Imaging with ß-CIT:
Dopamine Transporter

Healthy subject PD patient – Hoehn-Yahr

Stage 1
Longitudinal DAT Imaging in PD
PARKINSON (1817) CASE A.B.
“What words he still
could utter were
monosyllables, and
these came out, after
much struggle,
in a violent expiration,
and with such a low
voice and indistinct
articulation, as
hardly to be
understood but by
those who were
constantly with him.”
DYSARTHRIC SPEECH AND PD

• The fundamental pathophysiology of PD is a

depletion of dopamine in the substantia nigra
and the corpus striatum
– Mainly motor symptoms and cognitive deficits
– Speech alterations and hypokinetic dysarthria are
integral parts of motor disorders in PD
– First descriptions of dysarthria were based on
perceptual ratings and reported indistinctness of
articulation, weakness of voice, lack of inflection,
burst of speech, hesitations, and stoppages
(Darley et al, 1975.)
QUANTITATIVE VOICE ACOUSTICS

Tremor and falling

pitch are seen in the
production of vowel
/a/ in ‘pa,’ for a
single subject with
mild PD.
Notice the instability
of the fundamental
frequency and the
amplitude (green
and black lines in
window B).