By Jorge Casuso

September 23, 2019 -- A former Santa Monica medical director was sentenced Monday to five years probation after pleading no contest to felony possession of child pornography, the District Attorneys office announced.

Guido Germano, 59, a Santa Monica resident who was director of artificial intelligence medicine at Cedars-Sinai hospital, also must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and attend at least one year of sex offender counseling.

Deleted photo from Cedars-Sinai website

Germano, who was arrested on June 19 and released on bond, must forfeit devices which contained any child pornography images or videos, said Deputy District Attorney Angela Brunson of the Cyber Crime Division. Germano "shared child pornography videos using peer-to-peer software and downloaded them onto his personal computer at his home," the prosecutor said. Cedars-Sinai placed Germano on administrative leave in July, according to City News Service.

In a profile that was removed from the hospital's website shortly after the arrest, Germano was described as "an expert in the field of cardiovascular nuclear medicine."

He was researching "how to develop software to allow computers to process and analyze 3-D images of the heart."

He also was studying "how to apply artificial intelligence techniques to the measurement of parameters critical to understanding, the state and behavior of the human heart."

Germano was a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine.