Feasibility of Cortical Thickness Measures in Survivors of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Wilburn E. Reddick¹, John O. Glass¹, Qing Ji¹, David C. Carver¹, Kevin R. Krull²

The goal of this study was to determine the feasibility of assessing cortical thickness development in survivors of childhood ALL treated without irradiation. We were able to successfully extract average cortical thickness values from regions throughout the brains of 12 childhood cancer survivors using the FreeSurfer software to analyze MPRAGE images acquired at 1.5T demonstrating the feasibility of these measures. Even with this limited sample size, we demonstrated significantly thinner cortex in regions of the frontal and temporal lobes of survivors which were associated with decreased performance in specific neurocognitive domains of attention, working memory, and processing speed.