Patient-reported outcomes.

<p>Patient-reported outcomes.</p

Tower of London (ToL).

<p>(A) Baseline condition; (B) planning condition. (A) In the baseline condition, participants had to count to total number of yellow and blue beads. (B) During the planning condition, participants were instructed to count the minimum number of steps required to get from the start to the final target configuration. In both conditions, two response options were displayed on the bottom of the screen (range: 1–5).</p

Paired associates memory task.

<p>Participants had to press a button according to the direction of the arrows (low-level baseline) or indicate whether the picture represented a person or an interior design (high-level baseline). During associative learning participants indicated whether the depicted person was likely to live in the depicted interior. During the retrieval (outside the scanner) participants indicated whether they had seen the specific stimulus pair or not.</p

Subject and treatment characteristics.

<p>Subject and treatment characteristics.</p

Tower of London (TOL).

<p>(A) Main task effect and group comparisons (group differences were considered statistically significant at cluster-corrected p_fwe < .05; brighter colors indicate higher T-values). BC+SYST, BC patients receiving systemic treatment; BC, BC patients not requiring systemic treatment; NC, no-cancer controls. (B) Difference scores of extracted BOLD signal of parietal brain regions with clusters that show significant differences between BC+SYST and BC during increasing task load of the Tower of London. IPC, inferior parietal cortex; SPC, superior parietal cortex.</p

Tower of London and paired associates task performance, fMRI results.

<p>Tower of London and paired associates task performance, fMRI results.</p

Magnetic resonance imaging of the carotid artery in long-term head and neck cancer survivors treated with radiotherapy

<div><p></p><p><b><i>Background.</i></b> In head and neck cancer (HNC) patients, long-term treatment-related complications include radiotherapy (RT)-induced carotid vasculopathy and stroke. The current study investigated the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) characteristics of the carotid wall in long-term HNC survivors treated with RT.</p><p><b><i>Methods.</i></b> MRI of the carotid arteries was performed within a prospective cohort of 42 HNC patients on average 7 years after RT. Two independent radiologists assessed maximal vessel wall thickness of common and internal carotid arteries. In case of wall thickening (≥ 2 mm) the MRI signals as well as length of the thickened segment were assessed.</p><p><b><i>Results.</i></b> Mean (SD) age of the 42 patients at baseline was 53 (13) years and mean (SD) follow-up time after RT was 6.8 (1.3) years. In total 62% were men and 60% had one or more cerebrovascular risk factors. Mean (SD) dose of RT on the common carotid arteries and internal carotid arteries was 57 Gy (11) and 61 Gy (10), respectively. Wall thickening was observed in 58% of irradiated versus 27% of non-irradiated common carotid arteries and 24% of irradiated versus 6% of non-irradiated internal carotid arteries (p < 0.05). Mean (SD) thickness of the irradiated and non-irradiated common carotid arteries was 2.5 (0.9) and 2 (0.7) mm (p = 0.02). Mean thickness of the irradiated and non-irradiated internal carotid arteries was 1.8 (0.8) and 1.5 mm (0.3) (n.s.). Mean length of the thickened vessel wall was 48 mm versus 36 mm in the irradiated versus non-irradiated common carotid arteries (p = 0.03) and 20 mm versus 15 mm in the irradiated versus non-irradiated internal carotid arteries (n.s.). No significant differences were observed for signal intensities of the vessel walls.</p><p><b><i>Conclusions.</i></b> Our study showed significantly more vessel wall thickening in irradiated versus non-irradiated carotid arteries years after RT for HNC, while no differences in signal intensities were observed.</p></div