CIMIT: Jose G. Venegas, PhD

Dr. Venegas is an associate professor in anesthesia (bio-engineering) at Harvard Medical School, and is with MGH in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care. His career has been involved in developing an understanding of asthma and other conditions through single-isotope ventilation/perfusion PET scanning for quantitative assessment of topographical distributions of inflammation, ventilation, perfusion, intrapulmonary shunts and gas trapping. In addition to being the PI or Co-I in several NIH Grants, Dr. Venegas has worked on the development of devices for accurate exposure to inhalation gases for spontaneous breathing in small animals and human subjects and a device for enhanced inhalation therapy for emphysema.

Under the leadership of Dr. Venegas, the Pulmonary Imaging and Bioengineering Laboratory has been established at the MGH. This core lab offers cutting edge techniques for imaging the lungs of large animal models of lung disease and of human patients, quantification of the anatomical intrapulmonary deposition of aerosol therapeutics and the distribution of gaseous molecules within the lung and imaging methods combined with advanced computational models.

Studying underlying physiologic mechanisms in ARDS, COPD, Pulmonary Hypertension and Asthma.
Developing imaging methods for quantitative assessment of pulmonary inflammation, ventilation, perfusion, intrapulmonary shunts, gas trapping and aerosol deposition.
Assessing regional and overall effectiveness for optimizing new technologies developed for inhalation therapy.
Model predictions of ventilation distribution and airway geometry during broncho-constriction for lungs breathing gases of different physical properties.
Gaining new insights into the pathophysiology of respiratory diseases to guide the formulation and evaluation of new approaches to the management of these diseases.