Alistair has developed methods for understanding heart function using MRI, atlas-based characterisation of heart disease in large populations, and evaluation of heart stiffness and contractility from non-invasive medical imaging exams. He is a founding member and past Board of Trustees member of the Society of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, past Chair of the Flow and Motion Study Group of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals including Medical Image Analysis, Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, and GigaScience. He is Principal Investigator for the Cardiac Atlas Project, a world-wide consortium for the re-use of imaging data. This project has made cardiac imaging examinations available to the community for research into the analysis and population variation of heart disease. His work is funded by the New Zealand Health Research Council, the NZ Marsden Fund, the UK Wellcome Trust, and the USA National Institutes of Health.