Massachusetts General Hospital

Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School

Assistant in Biomedical Engineering,Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital

Research Areas

• Pulmonary imaging using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and CT to determine the effects of pathological changes on the spatial distribution of perfusion, ventilation, inflation, and inflammation
• Modeling of pulmonary function
• Airway behavior and mechanical ventilation in asthma
• Development of novel imaging and analysis methods to determine respiratory structure and function

Description of Research

Our research focus is part of the Pulmonary Imaging and Bioengineering Laboratory. We study the effect of bronchoconstriction on regional ventilation and how ventilatory patterns and mechanical ventilation affect the emergence of ventilation defects during bronchoconstriction. Our aims are to understand the interdependencies among airways that lead to the emergence of ventilation defects, how internal and external factors affect that behavior, and what conditions may prevent or help to recover from ventilation defects. Also, we develop novel methods for pulmonary imaging and image analysis to expand and improve our pathophysiological studies in asthma, COPD, ventilator induced lung injury and other diseases.

Selected Publications

• Venegas JG, Winkler T, Musch G, Vidal Melo MF, Layfield D, Tgavalekos N, Fischman AJ, Callahan RJ, Bellani G, Harris RS. Self-organized patchiness in asthma as a prelude to catastrophic shifts. Nature. 2005;434 (7034):777-82. PMID: 15772676
• Winkler T, Venegas JG. Complex airway behavior and paradoxical responses to bronchoprovocation. J Appl Physiol. 2007;103(2):655-63. PMID: 17478609
• Schroeder T, Vidal Melo MF, Musch G, Harris RS, Venegas JG, Winkler T. Image-Derived Input Function for Assessment of 18F-FDG Uptake by the Inflamed Lung. J Nucl Med. 2007;48:1889-96. PMID: 17942803
• Schroeder T, Vidal Melo MF, Musch G, Harris RS, Venegas JG, Winkler T. Modeling pulmonary kinetics of 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose during acute lung injury. Acad Radiol. 2008 Jun;15(6):763-75. PMID: 18486012
• Winkler T, Venegas JG. Self-organized patterns of airway narrowing. J Appl Physiol. 2011 May;110(5):1482-6. PMID: 21252219
• Winkler T, Suki B. Emergent structure-function relations in emphysema and asthma. Crit Rev Biomed Eng. 2011;39(4):263-80. PMID: 22011233

Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine

Phone: 617-726-3030

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Disabled Access: yes

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