• Anna Campabadal, Alexandra Abos, Barbara Segura, Gemma Monte-Rubio, Alexandra Perez-Soriano, Darly Milena Giraldo, Esteban Muñoz, Yaroslau Compta, Carme Junque, and Maria Jose Marti.
• Medical Psychology Unit, Department of Medicine, Institute of Neuroscience, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
• J Neuroimaging. 2022 Jan 1; 32 (1): 80-89.

Background And PurposeMultiple system atrophy(MSA) is a rare adult-onset synucleinopathy that can be divided in two subtypes depending on whether the prevalence of its symptoms is more parkinsonian or cerebellar (MSA-P and MSA-C, respectively). The aim of this work is to investigate the structural MRI changes able to discriminate MSA phenotypes.MethodsThe sample includes 31 MSA patients (15 MSA-C and 16 MSA-P) and 39 healthy controls. Participants underwent a comprehensive motor and neuropsychological battery. MRI data were acquired with a 3T scanner (MAGNETOM Trio, Siemens, Germany). FreeSurfer was used to obtain volumetric and cortical thickness measures. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm was used to assess the classification between patients' group using cortical and subcortical structural data.ResultsAfter correction for multiple comparisons, MSA-C patients had greater atrophy than MSA-P in the left cerebellum, whereas MSA-P showed reduced volume bilaterally in the pallidum and putamen. Using deep gray matter volume ratios and mean cortical thickness as features, the SVM algorithm provided a consistent classification between MSA-C and MSA-P patients (balanced accuracy 74.2%, specificity 75.0%, and sensitivity 73.3%). The cerebellum, putamen, thalamus, ventral diencephalon, pallidum, and caudate were the most contributing features to the classification decision (z > 3.28; p < .05 [false discovery rate]).ConclusionsMSA-C and MSA-P with similar disease severity and duration have a differential distribution of gray matter atrophy. Although cerebellar atrophy is a clear differentiator between groups, thalamic and basal ganglia structures are also relevant contributors to distinguishing MSA subtypes.© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Neuroimaging published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society of Neuroimaging.

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