10.1109/ULTSYM.2014.

0554

The Khokhlov - Zabolotskaya - Kuznetsov (KZK)

equation with power law attenuation
Xiaofeng Zhao Robert J. McGough
Electrical and Computer Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan State University Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan 48824 East Lansing, Michigan 48824

AbstractThe Khokhlov - Zabolotskaya - Kuznetsov (KZK)

equation is a parabolic approximation to the Westervelt equation 1 2 p 20 3 p 2 p2
2 p 2 + + = 0, (1)
that models the effects of diffraction, attenuation and nonlinear- c0 t2 c0 t3 0 c40 t2
ity. The original form of the attenuation term in the KZK model
yields frequency squared attenuation. However, for soft tissues,
the attenuation follows a power law with respect to frequency where p is the pressure, c0 is the sound speed, 0 is the
with a power law exponent between 1 and 1.5. A KZK model density, 0 is the attenuation constant, and is the nonlinearity
that incorporates the effects of frequency-squared attenuation parameter. After a parabolic approximation is applied, the
is presently included in FOCUS, the Fast Object-oriented C++ Westervelt equation reduces to the Khokhlov-Zabolotskaya-
Ultrasound Simulator, and a nonlinear KZK simulation that Kuznetsov (KZK) equation, which is defined in cylindrical
accounts for power law attenuation is also needed. When the
KZK equation is combined with the power law wave equation coordinates (r, z) as
[4], a continuous wave KZK model with power law attenuation
is obtained. Simulation results are evaluated in both linear lossy 2p 2 p 1 p 3p 2 p2
 
c0
media and nonlinear lossy media. Simulations in the linear lossy = + + 0 + , (2)
medium are evaluated with the KZK approach and compared to z 2 r2 r r 3 20 c30 2
results obtained with the fast nearfield method in FOCUS. The
results match well in the paraxial region but differ elsewhere. The where = tz/c0 is the retarded time. On the right hand side
effects of nonlinearity are then included in CW KZK calculations of this equation, the three terms from left to right represent the
that model the contributions from several different harmonics. effects of diffraction, attenuation, and nonlinearity. When the
The nonlinear pressure field is generated by a spherically focused
transducer with an aperture radius of 7.5mm and a radius of pressure is replaced with a series expansion that includes the
curvature of 60mm. The peak pressure on the surface of the contribution from each harmonic, the pressure for continuous
transducer is 1.5MPa and the fundamental frequency is 1MHz. wave (CW) propagation is given by
The lossy medium is defined for brain with = 4.3, = 0.6
dB/cm/MHzy , and y = 1.46, and blood with = 4.05, = 0.16 NX
max

dB/cm/MHzy , and y = 1.2. The number of harmonics computed p(z, r, ) = Cn (z, r)ejn2f0 . (3)
in each simulation is Nmax = 20. The pressure fields for the first n=Nmax
four harmonics are shown.
The amplitude coefficients are then expressed as
I. I NTRODUCTION
The Khokhlov - Zabolotskaya - Kuznetsov (KZK) equation  2 
is a parabolic approximation to the Westervelt equation. Al- dCn (z, r) c0 Cn (z, r) 1 Cn (z, r)
=j +
though the KZK equation is only valid in the far field of the dz 4nf0 r2 r r
2
paraxial region for mildly focused or unfocused transducers, 0 (2nf0 ) Cn (z, r)
the KZK equation is widely applied in medical ultrasound NX
max
jn2f0
simulations. An approach for simulating nonlinear continuous- Cm (z, r)Cnm (z, r)
wave (CW) pressure fields with the KZK equation is presented 20 c30
m=Nmax
in Berntsen [1]. Similar work has been done by Curra [2] and n = 1, 2, ..., Nmax . (4)
Soneson [3]. However, the attenuation term in the KZK model
yields frequency squared attenuation, which is inconsistent In soft tissue, attenuation of ultrasound follows the power-
y
with the power law attenuation observed in soft tissue, where law () = 0 || , which is exactly satisfied by the power
the power law exponent is between 1 and 1.5. Thus, there is a law wave equation
need to incorporate power law attenuation into the nonlinear
KZK equation for medical ultrasound applications. 1 2p 20 y+1 p 02 2y p
2 p 2 2
y+1

II. T HEORY AND M ETHODS c0 t c0 cos (y/2) t cos (y/2) t2y
2

The Westervelt equation is given by = 0. (5)

978-1-4799-7049-0/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE 2225 2014 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings
When the parabolic approximation is applied to the power law
wave equation and the nonlinear term from the KZK equation
is appended to the result, this yields the expression

2p c0 2 p 1 p 0 y+1 p
= ( 2 + )
z 2 r r r cos(y/2) y+1
c0 02 2y p 2 p2
+ , (6)
2
2cos (y/2) 2y 20 c30 2

which is the power law KZK equation. For CW calculations,

the power law KZK equation is given by (a)

dCn (r, z) c0 2 Cn (r, z) 1 Cn (r, z)

=j ( + )
dz 4nf0 r2 r r
0
(j2nf0 )y Cn (r, z)
cos(y/2)
c0 02
(j2nf0 )2y1 Cn (r, z)
2cos2 (y/2)
Nmax
j2nf0 X
Cm (r, z)Cnm (r, z)
20 c30
m=Nmax
n = 1, 2, ..., Nmax , (7)

where y is the power-law exponent. (b)

The power law KZK equation is numerically calculated
plane by plane along the z direction with a finite difference
method. For each plane, the effects of diffraction, attenua-
tion, and nonlinearity form a tridiagonal system of equations
Ax = b. The diagonal terms in A describe the diffraction and
attenuation, and the non-diagonal terms in A strictly describe
the diffraction. The array b includes contributions from both
diffraction and nonlinearity. This tridiagonal system is solved
by the Thomas algorithm [1]. The KZK codes are m-files
that run in 64-bit Matlab (2010b), and the FOCUS / FNM
routines are compiled C-language mex routines that also run in
Matlab. These programs are executed on a Windows 7 pro 64-
bit system, which has a Intel core i7-2600 @3.4GHz processor
and 32GB Memory.
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Simulation results are evaluated in both linear lossy media
and nonlinear lossy media. The simulated pressure field is
generated by a spherically focused transducer with an aperture
radius of 7.5mm and a radius of curvature of 60mm. The
peak pressure on the surface of the transducer is 1.5MPa,
and the fundamental frequency is 1MHz. The sound speed
is 1500m/s, and the density is 1000kg/m3 . The properties
of the lossy medium are defined for brain with = 4.3,
0 = 0.6dB/cm/M Hz y , and y = 1.46, and blood with
= 4.05, 0 = 0.16dB/cm/M Hz y , and y = 1.2 [5]. For
the CW KZK approach, the first 20 iterations are computed
with the implicit backward Euler finite difference method, then
Fig. 1: Linear simulation results for CW pressures with
0 = 0.6dB/cm/M Hz y and y = 1.46. (a) KZK method.
(b) FOCUS / fast nearfield method.
the Crank-Nicolson finite difference method is applied for the
rest of the simulation.
Simulations in a linear lossy medium are evaluated with the
KZK approach and compared to the results obtained with the
fast nearfield method (FNM) in FOCUS. For this simulation,
the nonlinearity parameter = 0. The spatial step size for
the CW KZK method is defined as /10 , where = c0 /f
is the wavelength of the excitation. Figures 1a and 1b match
well in the paraxial region. These figures shows that there is
some nearfield structure that is evident in the FOCUS / fast
nearfield method results but not in the CW KZK results.
The effects of nonlinearity are then included in the CW
KZK calculations that model the contributions from several
different harmonics. The maximum number of harmonics de-
fined for these simulations is Nmax = 20. The spatial step size
in the simulation is N max /10 , where N max = c0 /fN max
is the wavelength of the highest harmonic. The pressure fields
for the first four harmonics are shown in Figure 3 and 4.
Figure 3 shows that the peak value of each harmonic
occurs on axis, and the location of the peak pressure moves
slightly away from the transducer for the higher harmonics.
Furthermore, for each higher harmonic, the amplitude of the

2226 2014 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings

 (a)

(b)

Fig. 2: Linear simulation results for CW pressures with

0 = 0.16dB/cm/M Hz y and y = 1.2. (a) KZK method.
(b) FOCUS / fast nearfield method.

peak value is successively smaller. Comparing the fundamental

frequency in Figure 3 with Figure 1 (a), the pressure distribu-
tion is similar with almost the same peak value in the focal
zone. With a smaller step size applied in the simulation of
Figure 3, more nearfield structure is observed in Figure 3.
However, these points are only detected in the fundamental.

The pressure distributions of the fundamental are similar in

Figures 3 and 4. However, for the higher harmonics, especially
the fourth harmonic, the peak value in the brain attenuation
model is much smaller than that in the blood attenuation
model, due to the effect of both the larger attenuation pa-
rameter and the larger power-law exponent. The effect of the
power-law exponent becomes stronger for higher harmonics.
Also, the extent of the focal zone for each harmonic is larger in
the blood attenuation model. Further evidence of the effect of
different attenuation values is observed in the fourth harmonic Fig. 3: First four harmonics of nonlinear CW simulation results
at z = 10cm on the main beam, where the pressure amplitude with the KZK power law model. The parameters for this
decreases to 20% of the peak value for the brain attenuation siumlation are 0 = 0.6dB/cm/M Hz y , y = 1.46, and
model. However, for the blood attenuation model, the pressure = 4.3.
amplitude is about 40% of the peak value in the same location.

2227 2014 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings

 IV. C ONCLUSION
The original formulation of the Khokhlov - Zabolotskaya
- Kuznetsov (KZK) equation is for a viscous medium with
power law exponent y = 2. When the KZK equation is
combined with the power law wave equation to obtain the
power law KZK equation, the resulting expression models
diffraction, nonlinearity, and power law attenuation. The power
law KZK equation provides a model for simulating nonlinear
pressure fields using an appropriate attenuation model for
soft tissue. Linear simulations are validated by comparing
the results obtained with the CW KZK method and the fast
nearfield method in FOCUS. The results match in the paraxial
region, but some differences are noted elsewhere. Nonlinear
simulations of the power law KZK equation are evaluated for
the first 20 harmonics, and the first four of these are shown.
The results suggest that the power law KZK equation is an
effective model for diffraction, nonlinearity, and power law
attenuation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by NIH grant R01
EB012079.
R EFERENCES
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in M. F. Hamilton and D. T. Blackstock, editors, Frontiers of Nonlinear
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[2] Curra, F. P., Mourad, P. D., Khokhlova, V. A., Cleveland, R. O., &
Crum, L. A. (2000). Numerical simulations of heating patterns and tissue
temperature response due to high-intensity focused ultrasound. IEEE
Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 47(4),
1077-1089.
[3] Soneson, J. E. (2012). A parametric study of error in the parabolic
approximation of focused axisymmetric ultrasound beams. The Journal
of the Acoustical Society of America, 131(6), EL481-EL486.
[4] Kelly, J. F., McGough, R. J., & Meerschaert, M. M. (2008). Analytical
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Acoustical Society of America, 124(5), 2861-2872.
[5] Duck, F. A. (1990). Acoustic properties of tissue at ultrasonic frequencies.
Physical Properties of Tissues-A Comprehensive Reference Book, 73-135.

Fig. 4: First four harmonics of nonlinear CW simulation results

with CW KZK power law model. The parameters for this
simulation are 0 = 0.16dB/cm/M Hz y , y = 1.2, and
= 4.05.

2228 2014 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings