Izabelle Lövgren

Concussions are very common in young people. Despite this, research into head injuries, particularly in young people, is scarce. 

My DPhil project, funded by the Podium Institute for Sports Medicine & Technology, is focused on using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to better understand what happens in the brain after head injuries in 11 to 18 year olds.

Using a multi-modal MRI approach, my project aims to:

(1) identify clinical and imaging markers that help us predict how well a young person will recover after a head injury;

(2) investigate how these markers change over time;

(3) test if clinical factors (like injury mechanism) predict specific imaging findings;

(4) and evaluate the lasting burden of head injuries, particularly in sports.

We hope that in the future, this work will help identify children who have had a worse injury than suggested by the current clinical assessment tools.

My work is supervised by Associate Prof. Natalie Voets and Mr Tim Lawrence at NDCN, and Prof. Constantin Coussios at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

I completed my BSc Neuroscience degree at the University of Manchester (2022), where I gained experience in volumetric analysis in the context of radiation-induced brain atrophy in mice.

During my MSc Clinical Neurosciences degree at UCL (2023), I evaluated surface area as an imaging marker of Focal Cortical Dysplasia using surface-based morphometry methods (Freesurfer) in medication-resistant epilepsy.