Cranial Computerised Tomography in Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

Abstract

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.