The new MRI approach can detect with 85 percent accuracy people who have early stage Parkinson's disease, according to findings published in the journal Neurology. That's important because the early symptoms of Parkinson's are subtle, which makes an accurate early stage diagnosis very difficult, the researchers said. This new test, which focuses on scans of a part of the brain known as the basal ganglia, could improve the lives of countless patients with Parkinson's, said senior author Clare Mackay, a senior research fellow with the Oxford Parkinson's Disease Center at Oxford University.
"By the time symptoms of Parkinson's are obvious, a lot of damage has already taken place in the brain," Mackay said. "To reduce the impact of Parkinson's we need to find new ways to protect the brain before significant damage is done, so we must have good tools to identify people as early as possible…
