Simulation of advanced ultrasound systems using Field II

The background and basic features of the Field II simulation program are described. It can simulate any linear ultrasound system, which can use single or multi-element transducers. Any kind of apodization, focusing, and excitation can be used. The basic theory behind the program's use of spatial impulse responses is explained. A simulation example for a synthetic aperture spread spectrum flow systems is described. It is shown how the advanced coded excitation can be set up, and how the simulation can be parallelized to reduce the simulation time from 17 months to 391 hours using a 32 CPU Linux cluster.