
Dr Jacques-Donald Tournier
Senior Lecturer
Research interests
- Biomedical and life sciences
Biography
My work is focused on the development and application of diffusion MRI methods, particularly those that relate to the characterisation of white matter and its connectivity. I have worked particularly on: - the design of acquisition schemes for high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI); - estimating fibre orientations in a crossing fibre context via spherical deconvolution; - probabilistic tractography methods and related applications such as Track Density Imaging (TDI), Anatomically Constrained Tractography (ACT), and spherical deconvolution informed filtering of tracks (SIFT); - Apparent Fibre Density (AFD) methods for group-wise fixel-based analysis of whole brain diffusion MRI data (fixel: fibre element - a fibre population within an imaging voxel); - advocating the use of higher-order models for clinical applications, particularly neurosurgery. I am currently interested in identifying the best imaging parameters for neonatal diffusion MRI, specifically for use in the Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP). I am also investigating methods for the analysis of multi-shell HARDI data. Much of my research output is available for use in the open-source software package MRtrix, with the latest development efforts going into the next major release, MRtrix3 (already available, but currently still in beta). I complete my PhD in 2003 under the supervision of Alan Connelly and Fernando Calamante in the UCL Institute of Child Health, In 2005, I joined the Brain Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, which was later amalgamated into the Florey Institutes of Neuroscience and Mental Health. In 2013, I joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at King's College London, working within the Department of Perinatal Imaging and Health, located within St Thomas's Hospital, London.