Message from the President of ASCI

Abstract

I am greatly honored to be elected as the president of Asian Society of Cardiovascular Imaging (ASCI) and to greet you through this renowned journal. I started to serve as the president from the last ASCI annual congress held in Beijing in August 2013. For my two-year term, I will devote myself to succeed and fulfill the spirit and mission of ASCI. The cornerstones of the current ASCI have been established with the tremendous efforts and devotion of former presidents, professors Tae-Hwan Lim and Sachio Kuribayashi. As the new president of ASCI, I will try to promote the progression of ASCI in wider and deeper ways, quantitatively and qualitatively. The major academic activity of ASCI is the annual congress. Next year, on June 12–14, the 8th annual congress will be held in Jeju Island, Korea. In 2015, the 9th annual congress is planned in Kuala Lumpur. Hundreds to over one thousand participants have attended every congress, and many prominent speakers have been invited from other continent as well as Asia. Recently, with the intention to maintain a consistency in the quality of the annual congress, the annual congress guideline committee was organized, and the first version of the guideline was established successfully and will be observed starting from the Jeju meeting in 2014. ASCI has been acknowledged and advocated as a representative cardiovascular imaging society in Asia. ASCI has constructive academic collaboration with other cardiac imaging societies such as European Society of Cardiac Radiology (ESCR), Society of Cardiovascular MR (SCMR), Society of Cardiovascular CT (SCCT), and North American Society of Cardiovascular Imaging (NASCI). The current stage of our collaboration includes conjoint sessions during the annual congress, speaker exchanges, and journal collaboration. ASCI is publishing journal special issues twice in a year in the International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging, the official journal of the NASCI, with generous support by professor Johan Reiber, the chief editor of the journal, and Springer. We owe the success of our journal to the devotion of professor Yeon Hyeon Choe, the first editor of the ASCI issue, who just stepped down. The new editor of the ASCI issue is professor Tae Hoon Kim, who has been actively involved in ASCI as the secretary of the administrative office. Since ASCI is a relatively young society, recruiting excellent members from the Asian and Pacific regions is indispensable. For unearthing promising young radiologists, an annual scientific training program called Advanced School of Core Investigators from ASCI, [ASCI], has been successfully organized and held over the past 4 years thanks to the efforts of professors Jongmin Lee and Whal Lee, the program directors. J. Hoe (&) Asian Society of Cardiovascular Imaging, Department of Radiology, Radiology Associates Pte Ltd., Singapore, Singapore