Ultrasound imaging simulation and echocardiographic image synthesis

Presents a ray tracing ultrasound imaging simulation method that accounts for the effects of reflection, scattering and attenuation. Two-dimensional echocardiographic images were synthesized using this method. Nonlinear effects introduced by the signal processing units in an ultrasound imaging system were also emulated. Three-dimensional triangular facet mesh models were employed in representing the heart structures and generating the synthetic two-dimensional echocardiographic images. The synthetic images agreed with the corresponding real ultrasound images in major ultrasound effects. No other prior work in echocardiographic image synthesis is known.