Wide-Angle Parabolic Approximation for Modeling High-Intensity Fields from Strongly Focused Ultrasound Transducers

Abstract

A novel numerical algorithm based on the wide-angle parabolic approximation is developed for modeling linear and nonlinear fields generated by axially symmetric ultrasound transducers. An example of a strongly focused single-element transducer is used to compare the results of ultrasound field simulations based on the Westervelt equation, Khokhlov–Zabolotskaya–Kuznetsov (KZK) equation with differently modified boundary condition, and nonlinear wide-angle parabolic equation. It is demonstrated that having a computational speed comparable to modeling the KZK equation, the use of wide-angle parabolic approximation makes it possible to obtain solutions for highly focused ultrasound beams that are closer in accuracy to solutions based on the Westervelt equation.