Distributed three-dimensional simulation of B-mode ultrasound imaging using a first-order k-space method.

摘要

Computational modeling is an important tool in ultrasound imaging research, but realistic three-dimensional (3D) simulations can exceed the capabilities of serial computers. This paper uses a 3D simulator based on a k-space method that incorporates relaxation absorption and nonreflecting boundary conditions. The simulator, which runs on computer clusters, computes the propagation of a single wavefront. In this paper, an allocation algorithm is introduced to assign each scan line to a group of nodes and use multiple groups to compute independent lines concurrently. The computational complexity required for realistic simulations is analyzed using example calculations of ultrasonic propagation and attenuation in the 30-50 MHz band. Parallel efficiency for B-mode imaging simulations is evaluated for various numbers of scan lines and cluster nodes. An aperture-projection technique is introduced to simulate imaging with a focused transducer using reduced computation grids. This technique is employed to synthesize B-mode images that show realistic 3D refraction artifacts. Parallel computing using 20 nodes to compute groups of ten scan lines concurrently reduced the execution time for each image to 18.6 h, compared to a serial execution time of 357.5 h. The results demonstrate that fully 3D imaging simulations are practical using contemporary computing technology.