Intraoperative MRI for deep brain stimulation lead placement in Parkinson’s disease: 1 year motor and neuropsychological outcomes

Traditional deep brain stimulation requires intraoperative neurophysiological confirmation of electrode placement. Recently, purely image guided methods are being evaluated as to their clinical efficacy in comparison to surgery using microelectrode recordings. We used the ClearPoint^® system to place electrodes in both the subthalamic nucleus and globus pallidus internus in patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease. Off medication UPDRS scores were assessed before and 1 year after surgery as well as pre- and 1 year post-operative neuropsychological outcomes. Targeting precision was also assessed. Patients implanted in the subthalamic nucleus improved by 46.2 % in their UPDRS scores post-operatively (p = 0.03) whereas the globus pallidus group improved by 41 % (p = 0.06). There were no significant adverse neuropsychological outcomes in either group of patients. Mean radial error for the STN group was 1.2 ± 0.7 mm and for the GPi group 0.8 mm ± 0.3 mm. Image guided DBS using the ClearPoint^®system has high targeting precision with robust clinical outcomes. Our data are in accord with recent studies using the same or similar technologies and provide a rationale for a large comparative study of image-guided versus microelectrode guided DBS.