Nick Tustison

biography

After spending my early graduate years researching quantitative techniques for analyzing hyperpolarized gas lung images near the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains, I gave up the glamour, wealth, and prestige I had earned at the University of Virginia to forge new paths in cardiac imaging research in the Midwest. Working with Dr. Amir Amini at Washington University in St. Louis, I created a new deformable registration framework for analyzing myocardial kinematics using tagged MRI and B-splines. Although the mountain biking was unexpectedly superb (I lived about 5 miles from Chubb Trail) and fried ravioli is better than it sounds, the need for postdocs in Jim Gee's lab and the attraction of the East Coast lured me to the City of Brotherly Love (an ostensible contradiction for any of its denizens). After promising to do odd jobs around his home in addition to my normal research duties, Jim acquiesced to my pleas for more permanent employment. Currently, I find myself in the rat race euphemistically labeled 'academia' where I continue to manipulate arrays of numbers that have medical relevance (Ambiguous, I know. Specific projects are listed below.). I maintain my sanity by running (Fairmount Park is a favorite locale), reading non-fiction (philosophy, history, etc.), and enjoying my recent conversion to the gospel of Steve Jobs.


projects

  • Generalized B-spline approximation and interpolation
  • Translational work and the Insight Toolkit

publications

  1. N. J. Tustison, B. B. Avants, and J. C. Gee, "Directly Manipulated Free-Form Deformation Image Registration," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 18, iss. 3, pp. 624–635, 2009.
  2. M. Siqueira, L. J. Latecki, N. J. Tustison, J. Gallier, and J. C. Gee, "Topological Repairing of 3D Digital Images," Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, vol. 30, iss. 3, pp. 249–274, 2008.
  3. N. J. Tustison, N. J. Tustison, T. A. Altes, J. C. Gee, J. Cai, E. deLange, and J. P. Mugler, "Pulmonary Kinematics from Hyperpolarized Helium-3 Tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging," in Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, Piscataway, 2007, pp. 368–371.
  4. N. J. Tustison and A. A. Amini, "Parametric and Geometric Deformable Models: An application in Biomaterials and Medical Imagery," , ser. International Topics in Biomedical Engineering, J. Suri and A. Farag, Eds. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2007, pp. 493–534.
  5. N. J. Tustison, B. B. Avants, and J. C. Gee, "Gridding Graphic Graticules," Insight Journal, vol. 1, p. i, 2007. [url]
  6. N. J. Tustison and A. A. Amini, "Biventricular myocardial strains via nonrigid registration of anatomical NURBS model," IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 25, iss. 1, pp. 94–112, 2006.
  7. N. J. Tustison, B. B. Avants, T. Sundaram, J. T. Duda, and J. C. Gee, "A Generalization of Free-Form Deformation Image Registration Within the ITK Finite Element Framework," in Proc. Biomedical Image Registration, Heidelberg, 2006, pp. 238–246.
  8. N. J. Tustison and J. C. Gee, "Generalized N-D $C^k$ B-Spline Scattered Data Approximation with Confidence Values," in Proc. Medical Imaging and Augmented Reality, Heidelberg, 2006, pp. 76–83.
  9. Z. Song, N. J. Tustison, B. B. Avants, and J. C. Gee, "Adaptive graph cuts with tissue priors for brain MRI segmentation," in Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, Piscataway, 2006, pp. 762–765.
  10. N. J. Tustison and J. C. Gee, "N-D $C^k$ B-Spline Scattered Data Approximation," Insight Journal, vol. 1, p. i, 2005. [url]
  11. N. J. Tustison, D. R. Abendschein, and A. A. Amini, "Biventricular myocardial kinematics based on tagged MRI from anatomical NURBS models," in Proc. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Los Alamitos, 2004, p. ii–514.
  12. N. J. Tustison and A. A. Amini, "Myocardial kinematics based on tagged MRI from volumetric NURBS models," in Proc. Medical Imaging 2004: Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images, 2004, pp. 22–33.
  13. N. J. Tustison, V. Dávila-Román, and A. A. Amini, "Myocardial kinematics from tagged MRI based on a 4-D B-spline model," IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 50, iss. 8, pp. 1038–1040, 2003.
  14. N. J. Tustison, D. R. Abendschein, V. Dávila-Román, and A. A. Amini, "Myocardial strain imaging with tagged MRI," in Proc. 16th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Los Alamitos, 2002, pp. 723–726.

degrees

  • D.Sc. Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, 2004
  • M.S. Biomedical Engineering, University of Viriginia, 2000
  • B.S. Applied Physics: Computer Science Emphasis 1998

current position

Senior Research Investigator

member since

August 2004

research interests

  • biomechanics
  • open-source software development

theme

  • Segmentation
  • Biomechanics
  • Software Engineering
  • Registration

contact information

PICSL, Department of Radiology
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
3600 Market Street, Suite 320
Philadelphia, PA 19104-2644
TEL: +1 215 662 7688
FAX: +1 215 615 3681
email