Functional Imaging of Chemobrain: Usefulness of Nuclear Medicine in the Fog Coming After Cancer

Abstract

The impact of chemotherapy on brain functionality has been widely investigated from a clinical perspective, and there is a consensus on a significant impairment of multiple cognitive domains affecting cancer patients after treatment. Nuclear medicine offers a variety of biomarkers for evaluating possible effects of chemotherapy on the brain and for depicting brain changes after chemotherapy. This review summarizes the most relevant findings on brain imaging in patients undergoing chemotherapy for the most common oncologic diseases. The literature published to date offers exciting results on several radiolabeled compounds, from the more common imaging of glucose metabolism to neuroinflammation. This review also provides a general overview of the literature concerning clinical features and the physiopathologic basis of chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment.