The kinds of high-angular coverage scans they are talking about here (60-120+ gradient directions) take 45+ minutes on current clinical scanners. These scans give improved white matter resolution -- both spatially and for complex sub-voxel microstructure. With acceleration and faster gradient ramps the connectome scanner can get that down to under 15 minutes. It's still a long time for routine clinical use (typical U.S. scan sessions are billed in ~40 minute increments), but more feasible than 45+.
The big advantage in principle for neurosurgery is better resolution of crossing fibers and complex branching, for example the lower/lateral projections of the CST to hand area. I'm not sure if any clinical software can take advantage of these scans, yet, though -- so processing would probably need to be done under IRB in researchy software. There's also ongoing work in several groups to better resolve and possibly even characterize tissue microstructure in and around tumors using multi-shell DWI (especially relating to edema).
Here's one small study that compared several high-angle methods to standard DTI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23254805
Walt Schneider's group at Pitt has also done studies in neurosurgery planning and TBI using HARDI-type methods (no cite handy at the moment).
I think the author means 'radiographer' not radiologist. I also wonder about the claims as to how this will change clinical imaging. I get that this is a a amazing project, and it will have some far reaching effects but changes to clinical imaging will be limited imho. Multibanding existing sequences will make them faster, but sequences that benefit from the technique (bold and diffusion primarily) are not big clinical techniques. Diffusion is a routine tool but at <2 minutes it's hardly a problem to acquire. Maybe I'm missing something big like everyone getting a a functional scan as part of a routine clinical brains scan?