Purpose: To assess white matter microstructural changes in older long‐term breast cancer survivors 5–15 years post‐chemotherapy treatment.Methods: Breast cancer survivors aged 65 years or older who underwent chemotherapy (C+) and who did not undergo chemotherapy (C−) and age‐ and sex‐matched healthy controls (HC) were enrolled at time point 1 (TP1) and followed for 2 years for time point 2 (TP2). All participants underwent brain MRI with diffusion tensor images and neuropsychological (NP) testing with the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery. Tract‐based spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis was performed on the diffusion tensor images to assess white matter microstructural changes with the fractional anisotropy (FA) parameter.Results: There were significant longitudinal alterations in FA within the C+ group over time. The C+ group showed diminished FA in the body and genu of corpus callosum, anterior corona radiate, and external capsule on both the whole brain and region of interest (ROI) based analyses after p < 0.05 family‐wise error (FWE) correction. However, there were no significant group differences between the groups at TP1. Additionally, at TP1, a positive correlation (R = 0.58, p = 0.04) was observed between the FA value of the anterior corona radiata and the crystallized composite score in the C+ group.Conclusions: Brain white matter microstructural alterations may be the underlying neural correlates of cognitive changes in older breast cancer survivors who had chemotherapy treatment years ago.

Background: Around 1 in 59 individuals is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), according to CDS statistics. Conventionally, ASD has been diagnosed using functional brain regions, regions of interest, or multi-tissue-based training in artificial intelligence models. The objective of the exhibit study is to develop an efficient deep learning network for identifying ASD using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based brain scans. Methods: In this work, we developed a VGG-based deep learning network capable of diagnosing autism using whole brain gray matter (GM) tissues. We trained our deep network with 132 MRI T1 images from normal controls and 140 MRI T1 images from ASD patients sourced from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) dataset. Results: The number of participants in both ASD and normal control (CN) subject groups was not statistically different (p = 0.23). The mean age of the CN subject group was 14.62 years (standard deviation: 4.34), and the ASD group had mean age of 14.89 years (standard deviation: 4.29). Our deep learning model accomplished a training accuracy of 97% and a validation accuracy of 96% over 50 epochs without overfitting. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use GM tissue alone for diagnosing ASD using VGG-Net.

Purpose The purpose of this prospective longitudinal study was to evaluate the changes in brain surface gyrification in older long-term breast cancer survivors 5 to 15 years after chemotherapy treatment. Methods Older breast cancer survivors aged ≥ 65 years treated with chemotherapy (C+) or without chemotherapy (C-) 5–15 years prior and age & sex-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited (time point 1 (TP1)) and followed up for 2 years (time point 2 (TP2)). Study assessments for both time points included neuropsychological (NP) testing with the NIH Toolbox cognition battery and cortical gyrification analysis based on brain MRI. Results The study cohort with data for both TP1 and TP2 consisted of the following: 10 participants for the C + group, 12 participants for the C- group, and 13 participants for the HC group. The C + group had increased gyrification in 6 local gyrus regions including the right fusiform, paracentral, precuneus, superior, middle temporal gyri and left pars opercularis gyrus, and it had decreased gyrification in 2 local gyrus regions from TP1 to TP2 (p < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected). The C- and HC groups showed decreased gyrification only (p < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected). In C + group, changes in right paracentral gyrification and crystalized composite scores were negatively correlated (R = -0.76, p = 0.01). Conclusions Altered gyrification could be the neural correlate of cognitive changes in older chemotherapy-treated long-term breast cancer survivors.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate alterations in brain white matter fiber bundle integrity among older long-term breast cancer survivors treated with chemotherapy, with a focus on identifying potential neural correlates of cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI). Methods: Women aged 65 years and older were prospectively enrolled and divided into three groups: breast cancer survivors 5 to 15 years after chemotherapy treatment (C+), breast cancer survivors without chemotherapy (C−), and age–sex-matched healthy controls (HC). Participants underwent brain MRI with diffusion tensor imaging and cognitive testing at time point 1 (TP1) upon enrollment and again after two years at time point 2 (TP2). White matter fiber tract integrity was assessed using fractional anisotropy-based (FA) tractography across 80 major fiber bundles in the brain. Results: Over the two-year period, both C+ and C− groups exhibited significant reductions in white matter integrity with FA reductions noted in several fiber tracts, including the left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (C+ group: p < 0.01; C− group: p = 0.01), right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (p < 0.01), left inferior longitudinal fasciculus (C+ group: p < 0.01; C− group: p = 0.04), right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (C+ group: p = 0.04; C− group: p = 0.02), right vertical occipital fasciculus (C+ group: p < 0.02; C− group: p = 0.01), left anterior corticostriatal tracts (C+ group: p < 0.01; C− group: p = 0.02), right anterior corticostriatal tracts (C+ group: p = 0.01; C− group: p = 0.02), anterior commissure (C+ group: p = 0.01; C− group: p = 0.03), and forceps minor (C+ group: p = 0.03; C− group: p = 0.01). In addition, FA reductions were noted in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (p < 0.01), uncinate fasciculus (p = 0.01), thalamic radiation (p = 0.04), left optic radiations (p = 0.04) and right optic radiations (p = 0.03) in the C+ group only. No significant changes over time were detected in the HC group (p > 0.05). The fiber tract changes were considered statistically significant at a threshold of p < 0.05, with family-wise error (FWE) correction. Significant positive correlation was found between the longitudinal changes in the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and the fluid composite cognition score in the C+ group (R = 0.65 and p = 0.03; Pearson’s correlation). Conclusions: This study showed continued white matter fiber tract alterations in the older long-term breast cancer survivors who may have cognitive difficulties years after chemotherapy. Diffusion tensor imaging may provide valuable insights into the white matter microstructural correlates of CRCI in older cancer survivors.