Functional imaging of chemo-brain: usefulness of Nuclear Medicine in the fog coming after cancer

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 the
evaluation of possible effects of chemotherapy on the brain and for depicting brain changes after
chemotherapy treatment. This review aims to summarize the most relevant findings on brain
imaging in patients treated with chemotherapy for the most common oncological diseases. The
literature published to date offers exciting results with several radiolabeled compounds, from the
more common imaging of glucose metabolism to neuroinflammation. In this review, a general
overview of the literature concerning clinical features and the physiopathological basis of
chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment is reported as well.