Ultrasound waves propagation in aerated inhomogeneous media

Meeting abstract. No PDF available. ung ultrasound (LUS) has become a widely adopted diagnostic method for several lung diseases, recently also for COVID-19. However, LUS is mainly based on the presence of imaging artifacts, such as B-lines. These artifacts correlate with several pathologies, but their genesis is still partly unknown. Therefore, a study which focuses on the factors affecting these artifacts is carried out, numerically simulating through the MATLAB toolbox k-Wave ultrasound propagation inside the lungs. Since the main hypothesis behind the generation of B-lines is based on multiple scattering phenomena occurring once acoustic channels open at the lung surface, it becomes important to study the impact of changing alveoli diameter and spacing. In fact, these parameters influence waves capabilities of propagating beyond the pleural-line and how the different contributions add up. The tested numerical domain is of size 4 cm × 1.6 cm, the investigated frequencies vary from 1 to 5 MHz, the diameters and spacing range from 100 to 400 μm and from 20 to100 μm, respectively. Results show the strong and entangled relation between the wavelength, the domain geometries and artifact visualization, allowing to better understand propagation in such a complex medium and opening several possibilities for future studies.