Beamforming Toolboxes
rtbf - Real-time beamforming for ultrasound using GPUs
Ultrasound scanners produce large amounts of raw data that are processed into images. In the past, application-specific hardware was used to process and downsample the data into more manageable forms (e.g., apply time delays and sum channels). With recent technological advances, it is now feasible to perform these operations entirely in software at real-time rates using graphics processing units (GPUs). The goal of rtbf is to accelerate software beamforming to enable rapid prototyping of experimental methods and to increase the accessibility of GPU computing for ultrasound researchers.
QUPS: Quick Ultrasound Processing & Simulation
QUPS (pronounced "CUPS") is an abstract, lightweight, readable tool for prototyping pulse-echo ultrasound systems and algorithms. It provides a flexible, high-level representation of transducers, pulse sequences, imaging regions, and scattering media. It provides accelerated implementations of common signal processing functions for pulse-echo ultrasound data as well as cutting edge beamforming algorithms. QUPS can interface with multiple other Ultrasound simulation and processing tools including k-Wave, MUST, FieldII and USTB.
bentobox - frequency domain beamformers for ultrasound data written in MATLAB.
Ultrasound beamforming is typically done with the delay and sum (DAS) method, which, in software implementations, involves time-domain interpolation of collected RF data. In imaging sequences that capture more data, such as synthetic aperture acquisitions, an extensive amount of interpolation operations may need to be performed to form a final image. Although these operations can be done quickly using GPUs, some devices, such as point-of-care ultrasound devices, may have little to no GPU compute capability. Frequency-domain beamformers offer alternative image formation methods that have lower computational complexities than DAS. To facilitate easier use and testing of frequency-domain beamforming methods, the bentobox code repository provides MATLAB functions of the monostatic and multistatic synthetic aperture versions of Stolt (or f-k) migration, the range-Doppler algorithm (RDA), and the chirp scaling algorithm (CSA). Basic examples of how to use the functions with Field II simulation data are also provided. This toolbox was developed as part of Jakovljevic et al. "Adaptation of range-doppler algorithm for efficient beamforming of monostatic and multistatic ultrasound signals," IEEE T-UFFC 69(11):3165-3178, 2022, doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2022.3205923.