Abstract #3403

Treatment-Induced Structural Changes in Cerebral White Matter and Its Correlation with Impaired Cognitive Functioning in Breast Cancer Patients.

Sabine Deprez¹, Judith Verhoeven¹, Mathieu Vandenbulcke², Frederik Amant³, Refika Yigit³, Joris Vandenberghe², Marie-Rose Christiaens³, Caroline Sage¹, Ronald Peeters¹, Alexander Leemans⁴, Wim Van Hecke⁵, Stefan Sunaert¹

¹Department of Radiology, University Hospitals of the Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; ²Department of Psychiatry, University Hospitals of the Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; ³Multidisciplinary Breast Centre, University Hospitals of the Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; ⁴CUBRIC (School of Psychology), Cardiff University,, Cardiff, UK; ⁵Visionlab (Department of Physics), University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Cognitive impairment is a potential adverse effect of systemic cancer treatment. In this study, DTI and neuropsychological testing were used to study treatment-induced structural changes in cerebral WM and correlation of DTI metrics with cognitive functioning in seventeen post-chemotherapy breast cancer patients and nineteen controls. Voxel-based two-sample T-tests revealed decreased FA in frontal, temporal and cerebellar WM and increased MD in frontal and parietal WM in patients compared to controls. FA correlated with attention tests and WAIS-Digit Symbol in the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the sagittal stratum, respectively. These results suggest a link between WM integrity and treatment-induced impaired cognition.