Treeby, BradleyTumen, MustafaCox, Benjamin2015-12-10Septemberhttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/64464A k-space pseudospectral model is developed for the fast full-wave simulation of nonlinear ultrasound propagation through heterogeneous media. The model uses a novel equation of state to account for nonlinearity in addition to power law absorption. The spectral calculation of the spatial gradients enables a significant reduction in the number of required grid nodes compared to finite difference methods. The model is parallelized using a graphical processing unit (GPU) which allows the simulation of individual ultrasound scan lines using a 256 x 256 x 128 voxel grid in less than five minutes. Several numerical examples are given, including the simulation of harmonic ultrasound images and beam patterns using a linear phased array transducer.Keywords: absorption; acoustics; algorithm; article; computer graphics; computer program; computer simulation; echography; human; methodology; radiation; reproducibility; statistical model; three dimensional imaging; time; ultrasound; Absorption; Acoustics; Algorit201110.1007/978-3-642-23623-5_462016-02-24