COMPARISON OF BRAIN CT SCAN IMAGES IN KNOWN SCHIZOPHRENIC PATIENTS AND NORAML INDIVIDUALS

Schizophrenia is an important and common psychiatric disorder with unknown etiology. This disorder involves the brain and one common theory on its etiology is the development of structural brain changes. Brain imaging techniques are among diagnostic modalities, which have made direct observation of human brain anatomy. Most suitable is brain CT scanning. Previous studies reported diverse and sometimes controversial findings on the structure of brain in schizophrenic patients. Our main aim was to study the anatomical structural changes in schizophrenic patients. For this purpose, in this case-control study, 15 different anatomic parameters from the brain CT scans from 60 schizophrenic patients were compared to CT scans taken from 60 normal subjects. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using Z-score and Chi square tests respectively. Furthermore, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values and data negative predictive values were calculated separately for each variable. Our results revealed higher rate of frontal lobe atrophy (P <0.05), larger maximum diameter of lateral ventricle and left temporal horn (Z= 2.5 and 3.8 respectively), and higher rate of pineal calcification (P<0.05) in schizophrenic patients. The results point to the conclusion that a simple diagnostic method, such CT scan, might provide us with relatively reliable evidence for schizophrenia and act as a helpful diagnostic acceptable for psychiatrists.