The Taiji Fetal Medicine Workshop has now reached its 18th edition.

Over the years, we have invited many excellent faculty members from Taiwan and abroad, discussed countless clinical cases, and organized hands-on training in different areas of fetal medicine.

But now, I would like to take one more step forward.

From Workshop to Academy.

A workshop is an event.

An academy is a platform.

My vision for Taiji Academy is to bring together the fetal medicine cases, images, scanning techniques, and teaching experience that Taiji has accumulated over the years — and connect them with outstanding fetal medicine specialists from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

The goal is not simply to help people know more.

The goal is to help people do better.

And that is exactly what we want to begin with the Pre-workshop Hands-on Course of the 18th Taiji Fetal Medicine Workshop.

Our first faculty member is Dr. Wan-Ling Chih from Taiwan.

Dr. Chih is a pediatric cardiologist and an attending physician at Taiji Clinic. With extensive training in pediatric cardiology and echocardiography, she has long been involved in prenatal diagnosis of congenital heart disease, parental counseling, and the transition from prenatal diagnosis to postnatal cardiac care.

The fetal heart remains one of the most challenging areas of obstetric ultrasound.

But I have always believed:

The more difficult something is, the more important it is to break it down into steps that can be practiced repeatedly.

In this session, we will use the OPUS simulation system.

Participants will scan by themselves, find the planes themselves, make mistakes themselves — and try again.

The greatest value of simulation is not to replace real patients.

It is to give us a place where we can make our mistakes before we examine them.

Our second faculty member comes from Thailand.

Dr. Savitree Pranpanus is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Prince of Songkla University, and Head of the PSU PAS Center. Her clinical and academic work has focused extensively on Placenta Accreta Spectrum (PAS), including diagnosis, research, multidisciplinary management, and professional education.

She also serves as Chair of the Professional Standards Committee of the Royal Thai College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

I specifically invited Dr. Pranpanus to Taiwan because PAS is an excellent example of how we should rethink the role of ultrasound.

We should not stop at asking:

Is it PAS?

We should go further:

Where is it?
How extensive is it?
What does the surgeon need to know before entering the operating room?

Using the Samsung Z20 and 5D Viewer, Dr. Pranpanus will guide participants through PAS imaging, 3D volume acquisition, rendering techniques, and case-based analysis.

This is the transition I find particularly exciting:

from ultrasound as a diagnostic tool to ultrasound as a clinical decision-making tool.

Our third faculty member is Dr. Vo Ta Son from Vietnam.

Dr. Son is a fetal medicine specialist at Vinmec Times City International Hospital in Hanoi, with 13 years of experience in obstetrics and prenatal ultrasound.

He has undertaken extensive international training in fetal medicine, fetal neurosonography, and fetal echocardiography.

And there is something particularly interesting about him.

At the 2025 FMF World Congress on Fetal Medicine in Prague, he won First Prize in the Fetal Neurosonography Competition.

So I thought:

If we are bringing an expert to Taiwan, why ask him only to give a lecture?

Let us watch how his hands actually work.

This mission will focus on systematic fetal neurosonography, standard planes, scanning techniques, and case-based interpretation, using the GE E10 and 4D View.

There is something fascinating about fetal brain ultrasound.

Two people can look at the same fetal brain.

One sees, “It looks normal.”

The other sees anatomy.

The difference is training.

Our final faculty member comes from Indonesia.

Dr. Rozi Aditya Aryananda is a maternal-fetal medicine specialist affiliated with Universitas Airlangga and Dr. Soetomo Academic General Hospital in Surabaya, Indonesia. His academic experience also includes research collaboration with Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

What particularly interests me about his work is the way he approaches PAS.

Not simply as a diagnosis, but as a bridge between prenatal imaging and surgical anatomy.

In other words:

Can ultrasound create a map for the surgical team before the operation begins?

Using Samsung 5D Viewer and GE 4D View, this session will explore image post-processing, PAS lesion mapping, surgical risk assessment, and preoperative planning.

I believe this represents an important direction for the future of medical imaging.

Imaging should not end when the examination is finished and the report is written.

Good imaging should change what happens next.

Taiji Clinic founded in 2008.

Over the years, we have performed a large number of fetal ultrasound examinations and accumulated an extensive collection of clinical cases and experience.

In 2019, I founded the Taiwan Institute of Fetal Medicine (TIFM) to further develop fetal medicine education, professional training, clinical research, and international collaboration.

But the longer I work in this field, the more I realize that having many cases is not the most important thing.

The real question is:

Can what we have learned be passed on?

A good doctor can care for many patients.

A good teacher can train many good doctors.

And a good educational platform may allow this process to continue for ten years, twenty years, or even longer.

That is why Taiji Academy is more than another course organized by Taiji.

I hope it can gradually become an educational platform for fetal medicine in Asia.

Starting from Taiwan.

Connecting colleagues from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and eventually many more countries.

What we want to share is not only knowledge.

We want to share:

How we scan.
How we think.
How we make decisions.