John Rasmussen PhD

Dr. Rasmussen earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma and his doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. After graduation, he was appointed Instructor in the Department of Radiology at Baylor College of Medicine. In 2008 Dr. Rasmussen joined the Center for Molecular Imaging (CMI) in the Institute of Molecular Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston as an Engineering Scientist. In 2009 he was appointed Assistant Professor and serves as the faculty lead for instrumentation on the CMI’s NIH U54 Network for Translational Research grant. In 2010, Dr. Rasmussen was awarded The Robert Schobinger Prize for the best clinical paper at the 18th International Workshop on Vascular Anomalies for his research on the characterization of the lymphatic system using the imaging instruments he has developed.

As a trained engineer within the medical community, Dr. Rasmussen has played an integral role in the development and validation of pre-clinical and clinical near-infrared fluorescence imaging systems and their translation to various clinical institutions in the Texas Medical Center. The instruments which, for the first time in humans, enable the visualization of the lymphatics have been used to map sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer patients, image lymphatic architecture and contractile function in control subjects and subjects with lymphedema, and provide preliminary evidence of the efficacy of various lymphedema treatments and their impact on lymphatic function. Dr. Rasmussen’s research interests focus on the continued development and clinical translation of technologies for nonconventional therapies, particularly in the use of optical imaging to further our understanding of biological systems and to develop diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for a variety of diseases including lymphovascular disorders and cancer.