Ultrasound Signal Processing Using the Julia Programming Language

Julia is a programming language for numerical computing aiming at the combination of the usability features of a high level programming language with a good execution performance, allowing users to prototype and deploy their application using the same code. In this work, we evaluated the use of Julia for processing ultrasound signals and generation of a B-Mode image, being the input the raw signal acquired with an Ultrasonix platform using the Texo toolbox. We present the acquisition process using Texo and the signal processing chain implemented using Julia that encompassed: (1) reading data from files; (2) channel summation to obtain the scanlines (RF signal); (3) IQ demodulation; (4) envelope detection and logarithmic compression. We present the comparison of the execution time and the output image obtained with both Julia code and MATLAB (R). In this particular application, we achieved a speedup of 2.7 times using Julia, but if we take into account only the ultrasound-related operations (channel summation to logarithmic compression), there is no speed up (0.56), i.e. MATLAB (R) code is faster. Besides that, the frame rate we achieved using Julia was about 7 frames per second. Based on these values, we conclude that it is not yet an alternative for a real-time medical ultrasound imaging system, but it can be an alternative for MATLAB (R) when performing simulations.