A pseudo non-linear method for fast simulations of ultrasonic reverberation

Abstract

There is growing evidence that reverberation is a primary mechanism of clinical image degradation. This has led to a number of new approaches to suppress reverberation, including our recently proposed model-based algorithm. The algorithm can work well, but it must be trained to reject clutter, while preserving the signal of interest. One way to do this is to use simulated data, but current simulation methods that include multipath scattering are slow and do not readily allow separation of clutter and signal. Here, we propose a more convenient pseudo non-linear simulation method that utilizes existing linear simulation tools like Field II. The approach functions by linearly simulating scattered wavefronts at shallow depths, and then time-shifting these wavefronts to deeper depths. The simulation only requires specification of the first and last scatterers encountered by a multiply reflected wave and a third point that establishes the arrival time of the reverberation. To maintain appropriate 2D correlation, this set of three points is fixed for the entire simulation and is shifted as with a normal linear simulation scattering field. We show example images, and we compute first order speckle statistics as a function of scatterer density. We perform ex vivo measures of reverberation where we find that the average speckle SNR is 1.73, which we can simulate with 2 reverberation scatterers per resolution cell. We also compare ex vivo lateral speckle statistics to those from linear and pseudo non-linear simulation data. Finally, the van Cittert-Zernike curve was shown to match empirical and theoretical observations.