Denis Le Bihan studied medicine and physics in Paris. After an internship in neurosurgery, radiology and nuclear medicine, he obtained his doctorate in medicine in 1984 (University of Paris VI) with the specialty "radiology". He also follows a course in human biology (functional explorations of the nervous system, mathematical models in medicine). His training in physics focuses on nuclear physics and elementary particles. He obtained his doctorate in physics in 1987, his thesis focusing on a completely new method of magnetic resonance imaging that he introduced and developed (diffusion imaging and IVIM imaging (en) for IntraVoxel Incoherent Motion). In 1987, he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, where he remained until 1994. This is where he continues to develop diffusion MRI, introducing diffusion tensor MRI (DTI) with Peter Basser. Denis Le Bihan joined the Frédéric Joliot Hospital Service of the CEA in 1994 to head the anatomical and functional neuroimaging laboratory. In 2000, he became Director of the Federal Institute for Research in Functional Neuroimaging (IFR 49). He presided over the founding and opening of NeuroSpin in 2007 and has been its director since then. Since 2005, Denis Le Bihan has also been a regular guest professor at Kyoto University (Human Brain Research Center).
