Comparison of the performance of different tools for fast simulation of ultrasound data

Simulation of ultrasound data is often performed for developing new ultrasound data processing techniques. The spatial impulse response method (as implemented in FieldII) has typically been used as the gold standard due to its excellent accuracy in the linear domain. When scatterer numbers become significant and when 3D volumetric data sets need to be computed, calculation time can become an issue however. In order to solve this problem, two alternative methods have recently been proposed both of which are based on the principle of convolving a set of point scatterers with a point spread function. “FUSK” operates in the frequency domain while “COLE” runs in the spatio-temporal domain. The aim of this study was to directly contrast both methodologies in terms of accuracy and processing speed using FieldII as a reference.

► We directly compared two recently proposed US simulation methods, COLE and FUSK.
► COLE could provide accurate images in the entire field of view of the transducer.
► The accuracy of FUSK remains limited to the focal region.
► FUSK showed to be faster than COLE when simulating a low number of images.
► COLE outperforms FUSK to generate image sequences.