Adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer: effects on cerebral white matter seen in diffusion tensor imaging.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on normal-appearing white matter in women with breast cancer.

Patients And Methods: Ten patients with early-stage breast cancer who were treated with adjuvant chemotherapy and 9 age-, education-, and IQ-matched healthy controls were studied with magnetic resonance imaging. Diffusion tensor imaging was used to calculate fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of white matter integrity.