The Verasonics ultrasound system as a pedagogic tool in teaching wave propagation, scattering, beamforming, and signal processing concepts in physics and engineering

The Verasonics ultrasound system is a highly programmable data acquisition and processing platform designed to facilitate development of new medical ultrasound imaging methods. In contrast to conventional commercial ultrasound systems, individual element digitized rf data are available to the developer. All beamforming and postprocessing are done in software, and both the hardware data acquisition sequence and the host computer processing flow are programmable by the user using a MATLAB interface. Because the system is designed to be highly flexible, it can also be useful as a practical tool in teaching acoustic wave physics, transducer and array design, and data processing concepts, using benchtop scale homemade acoustic and elastic media, including flow models. For script evaluation and testing, the Verasonics system includes a hardware simulator that uses a simple point scatterer numerical model to compute rf backscatter data. rf data can also be recorded during a hardware acquisition, and then reprocessed using different user-developed algorithms for comparative study. Because the system is easy to learn, many fundamental concepts can be explored in a laboratory setting, using scattering media or custom transducers fabricated as part of the student experimental plan. The system enables sophisticated hands-on experience with acoustics beyond the numerical world.