Radiology, Vol 147, 703-710, Copyright © 1983 by Radiological Society of North America
Brain parenchymal density measurements by CT in demented subjects and normal controls
M Gado, WL Danziger, D Chi, CP Hughes and LA Coben
Parenchymal density measurements of 14 regions of gray and white matter
from each cerebral hemisphere were made from CT scans of 25 subjects who
had varying degrees of dementia as measured by a global Clinical Dementia
Rating, and also from CT scans of 33 normal control subjects. There were
few significant differences between the two groups in the mean density
value for each of the regions examined, although several individual
psychometric tests did correlate with density changes. Moreover, for six
regions in the cerebral cortex, and for one region in the thalamus of each
hemisphere, we found no significant correlation between the gray-white
matter density difference and dementia. There was, however, a loss of the
discriminability between the gray and white matter with an increase in the
size of the ventricles. These findings may be attributed to the loss of
white matter volume.
