Neuroimaging studies have found significant structural alterations of the cerebral cortex in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) following radiotherapy (RT) or concomitant chemoradiotherapy (CCRT), while their effects on the morphology of subcortical structures remain largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the subcortical morphological alterations between three groups: 56 untreated NPC patients (pre-RT group), 37 RT-treated NPC patients (post-RT group), and 108 CCRT-treated

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... patients (post-CCRT group). Using FSL-FIRST, we found that, compared with the pre-RT group, the post-CCRT group exhibited morphological atrophy in the bilateral thalamus, bilateral putamen, left pallidum, and left caudate and morphological inflation in the left caudate, while the post-RT group only exhibited morphological atrophy in the bilateral thalamus. We also found a significant negative correlation between the maximum dosage of RT for temporal lobes and the morphological changes of the bilateral thalamus in treated NPC patients. These results indicated that there may be an interaction between RT and CT that can cause subcortical damage.