Potential Roles of Neuroimaging in Motor Neuron Disease

Abstract

The review is intended to summarize and discuss the increasing roles and perspectives of neuroimaging in the clinical and scientific work-up of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other motor neuron diseases (MND). The applications of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) identify characteristic disease-specific patterns especially for ALS including its clinical subtypes. Guided by neuroanatomical pattern stratification, these MND-associated alterations could be detected by dedicated analysis parameters from MRI, including T1-weighted structural imaging and microstructural diffusion tensor imaging, in combination with additional MR techniques, to act as diagnostic and monitoring biomarkers. Imaging in MND increasingly makes use of machine learning-based analysis methods. The conceptualization of (neuro-)imaging in ALS and other MND encompasses multiparametric technical approaches, also of regions outside the central nervous system, together with aspects of disease-specific pathophysiology which will further advance the field in future applications.