The clinical diagnosis and monitoring of Parkinson’s disease (PD) remain challenging which prompted substantial research efforts to develop pathophysiological meaningful biomarkers. Depigmentation of the substantia nigra (SN), pars compacta, is a pathological hallmark of PD that can be detected by neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI). We undertook a meta-analysis on the pooled diagnostic accuracy of NM-MRI in 14 case-control studies including 755 subjects (427 PD). We show a consistent decrease of SN NM signal in PD vs controls independent of the acquisition and analysis methods with a pooled standardized mean difference of SMD=1.06, 95% CI, 0.84, 1.28, p<0.00001. In conclusion, this meta-analysis supports NM-MRI metrics as a diagnostic biomarker of PD.
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