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Absent swallow tail sign in Parkinson disease

Case contributed by Andrew Dixon
Diagnosis certain

Patient Data

Age: 60 years
Gender: Male

Note: This case has been tagged as "legacy" as it no longer meets image preparation and/or other case publication guidelines.

MRI Brain (selected image)

mri

Clinical high resolution 3D-T2*/SWI MRI (Philips ‘PRESTO’ sequence) of a Parkinson's disease patient showing absence of the normal high SWI signal within the nigrosome-1 bilaterally (absent swallow tail sign). 

Case Discussion

Image and text used under creative commons licence. Original source: Schwarz ST, Afzal M, Morgan PS et-al. The 'swallow tail' appearance of the healthy nigrosome - a new accurate test of Parkinson's disease: a case-control and retrospective cross-sectional MRI study at 3T. PLoS ONE. 2014;9 (4): e93814. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0093814

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