Rebecca Thornhill profile picture

Contact Information

Rebecca Thornhill, PhD
613-798-5555 ext 12032
rthornhill@toh.ca

ORCID logo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5308-5106

Rebecca Thornhill

Clinician Investigator, Clinical Epidemiology Program
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Assistant Professor, Division of Medical Physics, Department of Radiology
University of Ottawa
Imaging Scientist, Department of Medical Imaging
The Ottawa Hospital
Adjunct Research Professor, Department of Systems and Computer Engineering
Carleton University

Research Interests

  • Medical imaging physics, with particular expertise in magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders.
  • Radiomics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in medical imaging, including neuroimaging, oncologic, and cardiovascular applications.
  • Tracer kinetic modelling of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance image data.

Brief Biography

Dr Thornhill completed her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Western Ontario, where her work focused on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). She continued on to do postdoctoral research fellowships at McMaster University and the University of Toronto (Hospital for Sick Children). Since 2010, Dr Thornhill has been working as an Imaging Scientist in the Department of Medical Imaging at The Ottawa Hospital, with special interests in cardiac MRI as well as radiomics and AI in medical imaging. Dr. Thornhill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Ottawa and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University.

Selected Publications

  1. Hodgdon T, McInnes MDF, Schieda N, Flood TA, Lamb L, Thornhill RE. Can quantitative CT texture analysis differentiate fat poor renal angiomyolipoma from renal cell carcinoma on unenhanced computed tomography? Radiology 2015;276(3):787-796.
  2. Thornhill RE, Lum C, Jaberi A, Stefanski P, Torres CH, Momoli F, Petrcich W, Dowlatshahi D. Can Shape analysis differentiate free-floating internal carotid artery thrombus from atherosclerotic plaque in patients evaluated with CTA for stroke or transient ischemic attack? Acad Radiol 2014;21(3):345-354.
  3. Kassner A, Thornhill RE. Texture Analysis: a Review of Neurologic MR Imaging Applications. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol 2010;31:809-816.
  4. Thornhill RE, Prato FS, Wisenberg G. The assessment of myocardial viability: a review of current diagnostic imaging approaches. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 2002;4:381-41
  5. Schieda N, Nguyen K, Thornhill RE, McInnes MDF, Wu M, James N. Importance of phase of enhancement for machine learning classification of solid renal masses using texture analysis features at multi-phasic CT. Abdom Radiol 2020;45:2786-2796. Doi: 10.1007/s00261-020-02632-1.

Diseases, conditions and populations of interest





Research and clinical approaches