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Cranial Computerised Tomography in Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Alistair Burns
Alistair Burns*
Affiliation:
Section of Old Age Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
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Extract

The development of the non-invasive technique of computerised tomography (CT) in the mid-1970s revolutionised the clinician's ability to visualise brain structures in vivo. The main use of the CT scan was to exclude intracranial mass lesions such as cerebral tumours and haematomas. This remains its principal application in neurology and neurosurgery, but in psychiatry additional features such as cerebral infarctions, regional cerebral atrophy, ventricular enlargement and white-matter changes have provoked interest. This review outlines the technique of CT scanning, discusses its use in the differential diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), and comments on the relative contributions of cortical atrophy and ventricular enlargement to the clinical picture of DAT.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 157 , Issue S9: Brain imaging in psychiatry , December 1990 , pp. 10 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1990 

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