FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Natalie Costantino
919-297-7170
[email protected]

American Society of Echocardiography Announces 2025-2026 Board of Directors

(DURHAM, NC, May 8, 2025)—The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is pleased to announce that its membership has elected nine new members to its 2025-2026 Board of Directors. These individuals will officially begin their terms on July 1, 2025, and will be introduced during ASE’s 36^th Annual Scientific Sessions in Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 5-7, 2025.

The ASE Executive Committee welcomes newly elected Vice President Federico Asch, MD, FASE, MedStar Health Research Institute, Washington, D.C., who will serve a one-year term.

The following new Board members were elected to serve two-year terms:

• Karima Addetia, MD, FASE, University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, Ill.—Member at Large
• Pei-Ni Jone, MD, FASE, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago, Ill.—Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease Council Steering Committee Chair
• Shiraz Maskatia, MD, FASE, Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, Calif.—Leadership Academy Representative
• Monica Mukherjee, MD, FASE, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.—Member at Large
• Dermot Phelan, MD, PhD, FASE, Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute-Atrium Health, Charlotte, N.C.—Member at Large
• Vera Rigolin, MD, FASE, Northwestern Medicine, Chicago, Ill.—Past President Representative
• Douglas Shook, MD, FASE, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Mass.—Perioperative Echocardiography Council Steering Committee Chair
• Lissa Sugeng, MD, MPH, FASE, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.—Member at Large

Previously elected members of the 2024-2025 ASE Executive Committee transitioning to a new position on the 2025-2026 Board are:

• Theodore Abraham, MD, FASE, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif.—Immediate Past President
• Cynthia Taub, MBA, MD, FASE, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, N.Y.—President-Elect
• David Wiener, MD, FASE, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.—President

Continuing their service on the ASE Executive Committee through June 2026 are:

• Akhil Narang, MD, FASE, Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.—Treasurer
• Kelly Thorson, DHSc, MSRS, MS, ACS, RDCS, FASE, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, Palo Alto, Calif.—Council Representative
• Melissa Wasserman, RCCS, RDCS, FASE, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.—Secretary
• Robin Wiegerink, MNPL, ASE, Durham, N.C.—Chief Executive Officer

Directors continuing with their final year of service include:

• Kristen Billick, BS, ACS, RCS, RDCS, FASE, Scripps Clinic and La Jolla Hospital, La Jolla, Calif.—Member at Large
• Allyson Boyle, MHA, ACS, RDCS, FASE, Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute-Atrium Health, Charlotte, N.C.—Cardiovascular Sonography Council Steering Committee Chair
• Tony Forshaw, MS, FASE, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia—International Representative
• Jennifer Liu, MD, FASE, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, N.Y.—Member at Large
• Kameswari Maganti, MD, FASE, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, N.J.—Member at Large
• Nishath Quader, MD, FASE, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Mo.—Interventional Echocardiography Council Steering Committee Chair
• Matthew Vorsanger, MD, RPVI, FASE, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, N.Y.—Circulation & Vascular Ultrasound Council Steering Committee Chair

ASE thanks the following nine Board members who will complete their service on June 30, 2025:

• Benjamin Eidem, MD, FASE, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.—Immediate Past President
• Craig Fleishman, MD, FASE, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Orlando, Fla.—Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease Council Steering Committee Chair
• Enrique Garcia-Sayan, MD, FASE, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas—Member at Large
• Allison Hays, MD, FASE, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.—Member at Large
• Lanqi Hua, MS, ACS, RDCS, FASE, Mass General Brigham Hospital, Boston, Mass.—Member at Large
• Sheela Pai Cole, MD, FASE, Stanford University Medical Center, Redwood City, Calif.—Perioperative Echocardiography Council Steering Committee Chair
• Lucy Safi, DO, FASE, Mount Sinai, West New York, N.J.—Leadership Academy Representative
• Seda Tierney, MD, FASE, Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, Calif.—Member at Large
• Susan Wiegers, MD, FASE, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.—Past President Representative

About American Society of Echocardiography
The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is the Society for Cardiovascular Ultrasound Professionals™. ASE is the largest global organization for cardiovascular ultrasound imaging serving physicians, sonographers, nurses, veterinarians, and scientists and as such is the leader and advocate, setting practice standards and guidelines for the field. The Society is committed to advancing cardiovascular ultrasound to improve lives. In 2025, ASE is celebrating its milestone 50^th anniversary.  For more information, visit the ASE website ASEcho.org or social media pages on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Bluesky.

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The April issue of JASE includes a brief research communication titled, “Role of Quantitative Assessment of Atrial Functional Mitral Regurgitation.” Lead author Jwan A. Naser, MBBS, remarks, “Atrial functional mitral regurgitation (AFMR) is now a well-established entity associated with atrial fibrillation and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. The present study shows that while the categorical presence of AFMR was associated with increased mortality, the degree of AFMR across the range of effective orifice area values did not appear to confer additional risk. In contrast, variables reflecting atrial myopathy and diastolic dysfunction including E/e’ ratio and left atrial volume were linearly associated with increased mortality.”

Three other brief research communications accompany this one, addressing limited concordance of LV ejection fraction and chamber dimensions with automated assessments in HCM, the valid role of height-based pediatric echocardiographic Z-scores, and normal fetal ventricular strain in a pilot study. This issue’s original investigations incorporate a variety of topics including phenotypes and outcomes in aortic valve disease, echo-based machine learning and ICU outcomes, and congenital heart disease. An editorial comment accompanies a pilot study on how acute maternal hyperoxygenation can predict hypoxia and the need for emergency intervention in fetuses with transposition of the great arteries. Rounding out this issue are letters to the editor regarding blood pressure and echocardiographic interpretation as well as the mitral annular disjunction phenotype.

This month’s President’s Message written by Allyson Boyle, MHA, ACS, RDCS, FASE, and Ashlee Davis, ACS, RDCS, RCCS, FASE, discusses the musculoskeletal impact on those in cardiovascular ultrasound careers. This issue also features a special article on tailoring sonographer career paths with guidance from the ASE Sonographer Career Ladder Workgroup.

A new call for papers is now open! A focus issue on chamber quantification is set for publication in 2026. Papers that address any aspect of echocardiography in quantitative assessment of the cardiac chambers should be submitted by August 1, 2025. Please direct questions to JASE managing editor Debbie Meyer at [email protected].

Tune into our Author Spotlight page for interviews between JASE Editor-in-Chief Patricia Pellikka, MD, FASE, and authors of recently published papers. March’s interview features Monica Mukherjee, MD, MPH, FASE, discussing ASE’s newest guideline, “Guidelines for the Echocardiographic Assessment of the Right Heart in Adults and Special Considerations in Pulmonary Hypertension: Recommendations from the American Society of Echocardiography.”

Please see the April ASE Education Calendar for a listing of educational opportunities far and wide.

The latest issue of CASE is now available with intriguing reports, including “Ticking Time Bomb: Embolic Risks and Complex Management of an Exceptionally Large Papillary Fibroelastoma.” CASE Editor-in-Chief Vincent Sorrell, MD, FASE, remarked, “Although echocardiography (and cardiovascular imaging in general) can never provide a definitive diagnosis, there are many characteristic features of cardiac masses that guide us toward the correct tissue diagnosis. We are lucky to have a Journal that provides robust descriptions, multimodal correlations, and surgical or pathologic confirmation, compiling these CASEs in a growing archive of the common and uncommon presentations of both rare and common masses/tumors. In this month’s issue, we once again have several robust CASE reports that provide incrementally unique aspects of previously reported cardiac masses. Vincent et al. managed a patient with a large LA mass which was hemodynamically significant and associated with multiple strokes. The pre-operative diagnosis from echocardiography was confidently a cardiac myxoma, but proven by histopathology to be a very impressive, papillary fibroelastoma. We are reminded that echo is unable to provide a definitive diagnosis; but readers can now expand their preoperative differential diagnosis.”

Also included in the Cardiac and Pseudotumors category, Khaleel et al. utilize TTE, TEE, CT, and ICE to report on a rarity readers will want to note in their patient with multiple tricuspid valve blood cysts. In the Just Another Day in the Echo Lab category, Nguyen et al. share TTE images and correlative intraoperative findings of a young man with an untreated subarterial VSD and the progression to a ruptured sinus of Valsalva aneurysm. Kawabe et al. demonstrate a unique approach of using emergent aortic cross-clamping and the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit in their case of an LV thrombus that was dislodged and moving freely during intraoperative TEE.

Notably, this issue features two reports selected from our recent Sonographer Challenge—a report on a premature neonate with acute respiratory distress found to have an occlusive pulmonary embolus, as well as a 10-year-old with infective endocarditis and periannular extension of infection in an autograft diagnoses after undergoing the Ross procedure for congenital aortic valve disease.

Readers can look forward to Dr. Sorrell’s editorial, which discusses the etymology of “artifacts” and how to navigate the noise in your daily echo practice. Be sure to check out the latest Unlock the CASE on the CASE homepage, which was the winning entry from the Cardio-oncology SIG Case Competition.

SUBMIT your case report to us! Whether it will be your first time submitting a case or your 50^th, we are here to make it a great experience. Email us with questions or submit your report today!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Natalie Costantino
919-297-7170
[email protected]  

American Society of Echocardiography Announces
Accelerator Program to Drive Discovery Through Connection

(DURHAM, NC, March 12, 2025)—The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is proud to announce the launch of the ASE Accelerator Program, an initiative designed to support breakthroughs in the field of cardiovascular ultrasound. This innovative program provides participants with early and ongoing product development feedback, access to research validation opportunities, regulatory guidance and strategies for market commercialization.

The ASE Accelerator Program is designed for early-stage companies developing technologies that enhance echocardiographic imaging, streamline workflows and ultimately improve patient outcomes. Whether through AI-driven diagnostics, cutting-edge robotics, or portable imaging solutions, startups selected for the program gain access to ASE’s network, fostering collaborations that might otherwise take years to develop. ASE is pleased to introduce UltraSight™, a company transforming cardiac clinical workflows through machine learning by empowering minimally trained clinicians to capture high quality cardiac ultrasound images in any care setting, as the first ASE Accelerator Partner, marking a significant milestone in this new initiative.

“Innovation in healthcare technology is often driven by startups—lean, agile, and unafraid to challenge the status quo. However, these young companies frequently face significant hurdles, including regulatory challenges, funding limitations, and access to clinical data for validation,” said ASE Board of Directors President Theodore Abraham, MD, FASE. “The ASE Accelerator Program provides a lifeline to these promising ventures, offering mentorship, market fit validation, possible industry partnerships, and the opportunity to engage with key opinion leaders who can help refine their solutions. As the world’s largest cardiac subspecialty organization, an ASE partnership carries immense value. UltraSight is the perfect organization to be ASE’s first Accelerator Partner.”

For UltraSight, participation in the ASE Accelerator Program presents a pivotal opportunity. Andrew Goldsmith, MD, MBA, Medical Director at UltraSight shared, “UltraSight is revolutionizing cardiac care by empowering any healthcare professional to capture diagnostic-quality cardiac images at the bedside. This addresses critical limitations in access to cardiac imaging by providing reliable and predictable image capture that integrates efficiently within existing clinical workflows. Participation in the ASE Accelerator Program, as the first participant, presents a significant opportunity to contribute to evidence-based decision-making in cardiac care. This collaboration with leading experts will enable us to optimize the implementation of this technology and improve patient access to essential cardiac diagnostics.” 

ASE looks forward to welcoming additional Accelerator Partners in the future and driving advancements that will shape the next generation of cardiovascular ultrasound technology. In alignment with this commitment, ASE’s 2025 Scientific Sessions in Nashville, Tenn., will feature a special “Shark Tank” session on Saturday, September 6, to connect innovators with key stakeholders and showcase groundbreaking ideas and cutting-edge advancements in cardiovascular ultrasound. 

Learn more about ASE’s Accelerator Program at ASEcho.org/AcceleratorProgram.

About American Society of Echocardiography
The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is the Society for Cardiovascular Ultrasound Professionals™. ASE is the largest global organization for cardiovascular ultrasound imaging serving physicians, sonographers, nurses, veterinarians, and scientists and as such is the leader and advocate, setting practice standards and guidelines for the field. The Society is committed to advancing cardiovascular ultrasound to improve lives. In 2025, ASE is celebrating its milestone 50^th anniversary.  For more information, visit the ASE website ASEcho.org or social media pages on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Bluesky.

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