Functional and Structural Connectome Features for Machine Learning Chemo-Brain Prediction in Women Treated for Breast Cancer with Chemotherapy.

Vincent Chin-Hung Chen,Tung-Yeh Lin,Jyh-Wen Chai,Dah-Cherng Yeh,Jun-Cheng Weng

doi:10.3390/brainsci10110851

Abstract

Breast cancer is the leading cancer among women worldwide, and a high number of breast cancer patients are struggling with psychological and cognitive disorders. In this study, we aim to use machine learning models to discriminate between chemo-brain participants and healthy controls (HCs) using connectomes (connectivity matrices) and topological coefficients. Nineteen female post-chemotherapy breast cancer (BC) survivors and 20 female HCs were recruited for this study. Participants in both groups received resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and generalized q-sampling imaging (GQI). Logistic regression (LR), decision tree classifier (CART), and xgboost (XGB) were the models we adopted for classification. In connectome analysis, LR achieved an accuracy of 79.49% with the functional connectomes and an accuracy of 71.05% with the structural connectomes. In the topological coefficient analysis, accuracies of 87.18%, 82.05%, and 83.78% were obtained by the functional global efficiency with CART, the functional global efficiency with XGB, and the structural transitivity with CART, respectively. The areas under the curves (AUCs) were 0.93, 0.94, 0.87, 0.88, and 0.84, respectively. Our study showed the discriminating ability of functional connectomes, structural connectomes, and global efficiency. We hope our findings can contribute to an understanding of the chemo brain and the establishment of a clinical system for tracking chemo brain.

Highlights

Chemotherapy is a widely used, long-established therapy for cancers; it is often associated with long-term toxicity inducing multiple side effects
Cognitive impairment in post-chemotherapy patients has been a serious issue in recent years with the increase in breast cancer survival rate and the number of breast cancer survivors [1,2,3,4]
The exclusion criteria for patients with BC were being in a terminal stage of the disease, having a treatment history for any cancer other than breast cancer or double cancer, undergoing radiation therapy before the investigation, having an indication of brain metastasis on postcontrast Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings or any known brain lesion from previous brain image scans, having any contraindication of MRI scans, and having a history of psychiatric or neurological illnesses or substance-use disorders [22]

Summary

Introduction

Chemotherapy is a widely used, long-established therapy for cancers; it is often associated with long-term toxicity inducing multiple side effects. Cognitive impairment in post-chemotherapy patients has been a serious issue in recent years with the increase in breast cancer survival rate and the number of breast cancer survivors [1,2,3,4]. Brain Sci. 2020, 10, 851 impaired cognitive functions such as memory, concentration, multiple operation, executive functions, processing speed, reaction time abilities, and word retrieval, is common among breast, lung, prostate, and ovarian cancer survivors who have received chemotherapeutic agents [3,5,6]. A recent study [7], where the daily life of 42 post-chemotherapy participants was evaluated, indicated the requirement of independent diagnostics for cognitive impairment.

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