Chemotherapy-induced changes of cerebral activity in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and cerebral white matter in diffusion tensor imaging

While chemotherapy related cognitive disorder has been described in many studies, but we still lack relatively reliable and objective diagnostic tools, and there are few similar studies in Asian patients. We recruited Asian breast cancer patients to perform a cohort study to uncover chemotherapy related cognitive disorder by using resting-state functioning magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) and magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) combined with neuropsychologic assessments. This is the first prospective study which combines RS-fMRI and DTI to detect chemotherapy related cognitive disorder. The neuropsychologic tests and MRI were performed before and after the chemotherapy. The healthy controls were tested at matched times. The chemotherapy-treated group performed worse on memory and we found significant changes in the cerebellum, right orbitofrontal area, right middle and superior temporal gyrus, right subcentral area, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and precentral gyrus in RS-fMRI after chemotherapy. We found changes in the fornix and superior fronto-occipital fasciculus with DTI. There was a correlation between some cognitive function and MRI measurements in the correlation analysis, but it was not significant after false discovery rate (FDR) multiple testing corrections. The results indicate that RS-fMRI and DTI may be a prospective application for assessing chemotherapy related cognitive disorder.