Modelling Nonlinear Ultrasound Propagation in Absorbing Media using the k-Wave Toolbox: Experimental Validation

Abstract—The simulation of nonlinear ultrasound waves in bi-ological tissue has a number of important applications. However, this is a computationally intensive task due to the large domain sizes required for many problems of practical interest. Recently, an efficient full-wave nonlinear ultrasound model was developed and released as part of the open source k-Wave Toolbox. Here, this model is validated using a series of experimental measurements made with a linear diagnostic ultrasound probe and a membrane hydrophone. Measurements were performed in both deionised water and olive oil, the latter exhibiting power law absorption characteristics similar to human tissue. Steering angles of 0o and 20o were also tested, with propagation distances on the order of hundreds of acoustic wavelengths. The simulated and experimental results show a close agreement in both the time and frequency domains. These results demonstrate the quantitative validity of performing nonlinear ultrasound simulations using the k-Wave toolbox. I