USTB is not the first ultrasound toolbox (and most likely neither the last). Similar toolboxes have been developped in the past, although USTB is perhaps the most general so far: it supports most beamforming sequences known today. Here we include a list of beamforming toolboxes and simulation tools USTB is indebted to.
Beamforming
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Beamformation Toolbox by Svetoslav Nikolov Matlab toolbox written in C for beamformation of ultrasound data. It supports standard beamforming methods as well as synthetic aperture focusing. Several types of focusing are supported: fixed, multiple, dynamic focusing, and pixel-based. |
Simulation
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Field II by Jørgen Jensen Most likely the most widely used simulation tool in the ultrasound comunity. It relies on linear systems theory and on the concept of spatial impulse responses to find the ultrasound field for both the pulsed and continuous wave case. |
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k-Wave by Bradley Treeby, Ben Cox, and Jiri Jaros Open source acoustics toolbox for MATLAB and C++ based on the k-space pseudospectral method. The software is designed for time domain acoustic and ultrasound simulations in complex and tissue-realistic media. |
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The DREAM Toolbox by Fredrik Lingvall Open source toolbox for both Matlab and Octave, for simulating acoustic fields produced by arbitrarily shaped transducer arrays. It enables wideband pulse excitation both in near and far fields. |
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FOCUS by Robert J. McGough FOCUS is a cross-platform ultrasound simulation tool, based on the fast nearfield method and angular spectrum approach, to calculate pressure fields generated by single transducers and phased arrays. |