What is ultraspy?
ultraspy is a package developed by CREATIS and TPAC, as part of the ANR Labcom Image4US. It is designed to efficiently manipulate ultrasound data using GPU. The most common beamforming or Doppler methods are implemented (such as DAS, RF to I/Qs, Color/Power Doppler, …), along with some state-of-the-art methods (Capon beamforming, Vector Doppler, alias-free Doppler velocity, …). A set of metrics (PSL, FWHM, SNR) is also provided so anyone can validate the quality of their ultrasound data and beamforming operations.
The package is designed to work with both RF and I/Q signals, in 2D or 3D, and with any type of probe (linear, convex, or matrix). The core code can run both on CPU and GPU, making it ideal for any real-time application. All beamforming parameters (f-number, compounding, apodization…) can be freely customized at any time for research purposes.
The package has been thought to be as flexible as possible, so that anyone could eventually clone it and add its own research methods and test it in real time. A set of tutorials is provided to facilitate user learning and adoption, along with some instruction on how to contribute to the lib if you feel like your research method should be added to help the community.
This package has been tested for Windows only, it should be flexible to Linux OS as well but you might have some GPU compatibilities issues. Any contribution on this point is more than welcome.
What can it do?
General beamforming methods, flexible to Radio-Frequency or In-phase Quadrature data, working on CPU and GPU. Mainly DAS and FDMAS for the plane-wave imaging, but also TFM for Beam Focusing imaging
Advanced beamforming methods (p-DAS or Capon), with a dedicated tutorial to understand how these are implemented and how to implement your own methods
Basic Doppler methods (Color and Power maps), and their dedicated utilities functions (matched filtering, RF to I/Qs conversion)
Advanced Doppler methods, such as a proposition for alias-free alias-free Doppler velocities (using dual-wavelength method). This still lacks of methods, and should include Vector Doppler or so in future releases
Basic metrics for evaluation of the data quality (SNR), or of our beamforming algorithms (FWHM, PSL, CNR)
Great, I’m in! What should I do?
First thing first, you’ll have to install it, then you can have a look to the examples. Enjoy! :-)
Use ultraspy
An IEEE IUS proceeding has been published to introduce textit{ultraspy}, please cite it whenever you use the library.
P. Ecarlat, E. Carcreff, F. Varray, H. Liebgott, and B. Nicolas, “Get ready to spy on Ultrasound: Meet ultraspy”, in International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS). IEEE, 2023
@inproceedings{ecarlat2023ultraspy,
title={Get ready to {S}py on {U}ltrasound: {M}eet ultraspy},
author={Ecarlat, Pierre and Carcreff, Ewen and Varray, François and Liebgott, Hervé and Nicolas, Barbara},
booktitle={International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS)},
pages={1--4},
year={2023},
organization={IEEE}
}
Special thanks
The list of contributors and advisors can be found in the dedicated section.
