A college lecturer was placed on the sex offenders' register last night after more than 1,500 pornographic images of children were found on his computer.

Iasao Yasahura, a 42-year-old from Japan, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing after officers discovered the pictures as part of a joint operation with the FBI.

The married academic and father-of-two left his post at Newcastle University in the wake of the Operation Ore investigation.

Yasahura, of Bayswater Road, Jesmond, Newcastle, showed no emotion in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court as he was handed a three-year community rehabilitation order.

His details were found on a database by investigators in the US and as a result police raided his home last October.

The images showing children were found among a total of more than 16,000 pornographic images stored on his home computer, said Caroline Goodwin, prosecuting.

The court heard he had "time and time again" insisted that he believed them in fact to be artistic images.

But Judge Beatrice Bolton said: ''I don't accept for a moment that this is the result of Mr Yasahura's interest in the artistic development or otherwise of young children."

Robert Adams, in mitigation, said: ''He has been a university lecturer - a clever man, a very well-respected man."

Yasahura was placed on the sex offenders' register for five years and ordered to pay costs of £722.