Abstract
In this paper, we consider the inverse problem of vibro-acoustography, a technique for enhancing ultrasound imaging by making use of nonlinear effects. It amounts to determining two spatially variable coefficients in a system of PDEs describing propagation of two directed sound beams and the wave resulting from their nonlinear interaction. To justify the use of Newton’s method for solving this inverse problem, on one hand, we verify well-definedness and differentiability of the forward operator corresponding to two versions of the PDE model; on the other hand, we consider an all-at-once formulation of the inverse problem and prove convergence of Newton’s method for its solution.
1 Introduction
Recently, several approaches for enhancing ultrasound by means of nonlinear effects have been proposed.
In this paper, we consider vibro-acoustography which has originally been proposed in [4, 5] to achieve the enhanced resolution by high frequency waves while avoiding the drawbacks of scattering from small inclusions and of stronger attenuation at higher frequencies.
The experiment for image acquisition basically consists of three parts.
(i) Two ultrasound beams of high and slightly different frequencies
The fact that the value of the nonlinearity parameter
The aim of this paper is to study the inverse problem of identifying both
The model we will use here can be derived from a general wave equation for an acoustic velocity potential 𝜙 given by
by means of the asymptotic ansatz
with small
First of all, plugging (1.2) into (1.1) yields
Considering only terms up to order
an expression containing the second order in space and time wave operator
Paraxial Approximation
We assume that the direction of propagation is the
where
Here
Frequency Domain Formulation
We make the time harmonic ansatz
Here the excitation frequencies are assumed to satisfy
Altogether, for
we end up with the transformation in particular of the wave operator
and likewise for
Due to the boundary condition
The outcome of the nonlinear term is more complicated and depends on the interplay between the asymptotic ansatz (1.2) governed by 𝜀 and the paraxial approximation (1.4) governed by
The Considered Models
The inverse problem of combined nonlinearity imaging and speed of sound reconstruction will be considered for one of these models, namely
with boundary conditions
and
The coefficients we are interested in are related to the speed of sound and the nonlinearity parameter by
Due to space dependence of 𝑐 and
In (1.8),
To model excitation by an array of piezoelectric transducers, continuity of the normal velocity over the transducer-fluid interface would induce Neumann boundary conditions on the velocity potential.
In our setting, these would read as
Well-posedness of the forward problem (1.7)–(1.8) will be studied in Section 2.
From the point of view of the outgoing wave described by
for
see Section 2.2 for its well-posedness analysis.
Due to (1.5), the coefficients in the boundary conditions (1.8), (1.10) are related by
Thus, with the typical choice
We wish to mention that the paraxial approximation is also made use of in the derivation of the Khokhlov–Zabolotskaya–Kuznetsov (KZK) equation
(see [23] and also, e.g., [21] for its analysis). Note, however, that, in our case, the quadratic nonlinearity is decoupled and appears as a source term for the 𝜓 equation, whereas (1.11) is a nonlinear (more precisely, quasilinear) equation, whose expansion in frequency domain would lead to an infinite system of space-dependent PDEs, similarly to [9].
The Inverse Problem
Our aim is to reconstruct 𝑠 and 𝜂 in the boundary value problem (1.7), (1.8) from measurements of the acoustic pressure[1]
where
This can be formulated as an operator equation
with
with the (linear) observation operator
We consider 𝐹 as an operator
In Section 3, we will alternatively consider an all-at-once formulation of this problem that keeps the parameters and the state as simultaneous unknowns, thus avoiding the use of a parameter-to-state map 𝑆.
Identification of the nonlinearity coefficient 𝜂 in time domain models of nonlinear acoustics has been studied, e.g., in [1, 13, 12, 15, 8, 22] and in frequency domain in [14]; in particular, [15] also considers simultaneous identification of 𝑠 and 𝜂. However, the physical background and therefore also the model differs from the ones we consider here.
A preliminary analysis of the inverse problem of ultrasound vibro-acoustography with models similar to those considered here, but still without the paraxial approximation, can be found in [11]. In [20], models using a paraxial approximation are derived in time and frequency domain, and the inverse problem of reconstructing 𝜂 is studied.
The plan of this paper is as follows. Section 2 is devoted to the forward problem of solving the PDE model for given coefficients. We prove well-definedness and differentiability of the parameter-to-state map (1.13) for both options (1.7) and (1.9), in order to justify the application of Newton type methods for the inverse problems. These are discussed in Section 3, where we establish convergence of a frozen Newton method for reconstructing 𝜂 and 𝑠 in (1.9). We point to the fact that proving convergence of iterative regularization methods is notoriously difficult in inverse problems with boundary observations, as typical for tomographic imaging. This is due to the fact that convergence criteria, such as the so-called tangential cone condition, can usually not be verified in the situation of restricted observations. We therefore here work with a range invariance condition instead that indeed can be rigorously verified here and allows to conclude convergence.
An implementation and numerical experiments with the methods analyzed here is subject of future work. Some numerical results on the simultaneous reconstruction of 𝑠 and 𝜂 in the Westervelt equation (thus related to this work, but using a model in time domain with a single PDE rather than a system) based on a Newton type iteration as well, can be found in [15].
2 Well-Posedness of the Forward Problem
In this section, we will prove well-definedness and differentiability of the parameter-to-state map for the systems (1.7), (1.8) and (1.9), (1.10), respectively.
In doing so, we put a particular emphasis on monitoring the smoothness assumptions on the coefficients, which we aim at keeping minimal in view of the fact that, in practice, 𝑠 and 𝜂 tend to be only piecewise smooth and also the inverse problem becomes more ill-posed the higher order the norm in preimage space needs to be chosen.
To justify the use of Newton’s method for solving the inverse problem (1.12), we will also prove differentiability of the parameter-to-state map (1.13).
2.1 Well-Posedness of Paraxial Wave Propagation with Variable Coefficients
Consider the PDEs (1.7) with boundary conditions (1.8). The equations take the form of a (perturbed) Schrödinger equation; hence well-known techniques for that equation can be adopted here (see, e.g., [16] and the references therein). Since we here require estimates that are explicit in terms of appropriate norms of 𝑠 and 𝜂, we will first of all provide some energy estimates for solutions of the linear variable coefficient problems
and
Here we assume all coefficients 𝑠,
Moreover, for (2.2), we will assume the Poincaré–Friedrichs type estimate on the domain
to hold for some
If
then a solution of (2.1), exists, is unique and satisfies the estimate
with some constants
If
are satisfied with
with some constant
Proof
As in standard evolutionary PDEs, the proof is based on a Galerkin approximation by eigenfunctions of the negative Laplacian, energy estimates and taking weak limits; cf., e.g., [3]. We will here focus on the energy estimates since the other steps of the proof are relatively straightforward for the linear problems under consideration.
We will multiply the PDEs with appropriate test functions and integrate over
Testing this way first of all (2.1) with
Doing the same with (2.2) and integrating over
We also differentiate (2.1) with respect to 𝑧 and test with
For the initial value problem (with respect to 𝑧) for the Schrödinger equation (2.1), we combine
thus, using Young’s inequality with factors
An application of Gronwall’s inequality yields
where we can insert the initial conditions and their differentiated version substituting from the PDE
Using this together with the Cauchy–Schwarz and Young’s inequalities in (2.5) yields the estimate
where we have chosen
To obtain an estimate for the two point boundary value problem (with respect to 𝑧) for the perturbed Schrödinger equation (2.2), we combine
where
we invoke (2.4) and choose
Since we will apply the part of Proposition 1 concerning (2.1) with large
A wave number explicit estimate for (2.2) follows by application of the transformation (1.6) to the Helmholtz equation without having to impose a smallness condition (2.4); see Proposition 2 in the next subsection.
Using Proposition 1, we can conclude the following results on the parameter-to-state map:
and its linearization
with boundary conditions
Assume
and Gâteaux differentiable for all
where
for some
with
Proof
The first part of Proposition 1 with
Setting
It is readily checked that the first variation of 𝑆 at
and implies
Finally, application of the second part of Proposition 1 with
with
2.2 Well-Posedness, Using the Helmholtz Equation for the Propagating Wave
Alternatively to the paraxial form of the PDE for
for
with
Well-posedness and Gâteaux differentiability of the forward operator defined by system (2.13), (2.14) follows analogously to Corollary 1 by combining the first part of Proposition 1 with known results on the Helmholtz equation with impedance boundary conditions; see, e.g., [19, Chapter 8]. For completeness and to track the required coefficient regularity, we here provide the essential arguments.
We start with some energy estimates for the Helmholtz equation that can be obtained by applying the testing strategy from [19, Chapter 8] (where the constant coefficient case with
Testing the general Helmholtz equation on a smooth domain Ω with impedance boundary conditions
with 𝑢 and taking real and imaginary parts yields
On a starlike domain Ω in two space dimensions
on
Here we have used the identities
as well as the divergence theorem and
This yields the following results in a low and higher regularity regime of 𝑠 and correspondingly estimates on 𝑢 with different frequency dependence of the constants.
If Ω is a bounded
with some constant
If additionally
Here
If additionally Ω is a star-shaped domain with (2.17),
are satisfied, then the solution of (2.15) satisfies the estimate
with some 𝐶 independent of 𝜔.
Proof
The well-posedness proof in the low regularity regime follows analogously to the one in the constant coefficient case [19, Chapter 8].
Since it can hardly be found in the literature for our setting (variably slowness, impedance boundary conditions), we provide it here.
We rewrite (2.15) as
for any
where
The higher order regularity result (2.19) follows from elliptic regularity and the fact that 𝑢 satisfies
From (2.18) with (2.17), (2.20), applying the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, we conclude
Hence, by Young’s inequality and the second equation in (2.16), that is,
with
with
Together with the first identity in (2.16), this yields
and again, elliptic regularity yields (2.21). ∎
Analogously to Corollary 1, we obtain well-definedness and differentiability of the parameter-to-state map.
Under the assumptions of Corollary 1, but without (2.4) and with 𝑉 replaced by
the parameter-to-state map
is well-defined as an operator
as an operator
3 Convergence of a Frozen Newton Method for the Inverse Problem
Based on the parameter-to-state map 𝑆 defined in (1.13) and analyzed in Section 2 as well as the observation operator (1.14), we can write the inverse problem as
with
Alternatively, we here consider an all-at-once formulation
with
for
The formal linearization of
for some
We can achieve the range invariance relation
by setting
where
and similarly for
as well as
hence
Based on the range invariance condition (3.4), we can rewrite the inverse problem of reconstructing
for the unknowns
For its regularized iterative solution, we consider the frozen Newton method
where
In order to prove convergence of (3.7), we additionally need a condition on compatibility of the linear operators
For the model (1.7), (1.8) described by (3.3), this would likely require more than one excitation as well as observations at several frequencies, along with the corresponding extension of dependency of 𝑠 in order to allow for range invariance (3.4).
We here rigorously establish (3.8) for the alternative model (2.13), (2.14) using the Helmholtz equation for the outgoing wave
The unknown parameters are then the squared slowness
where 𝑓 is given by the excitation waves
In our linearized uniqueness proof, we will assume that 𝒜, 𝒟 and ℳ are simultaneously diagonalizable.
This holds true, e.g., in the case
To obtain uniqueness, we will need observations on an interval 𝐼 of difference frequencies
with 𝐼 countable containing at least one accumulation point, which implies
Therewith, the inverse problem reads as
where
It is readily checked that range invariance (3.4) holds with
and
with
Defining 𝒫, 𝕏, 𝕐, ℤ by
for some finite measure 𝜇 on 𝐼, we can write the inverse problem as (3.6) and use (3.7) for its regularized numerical solution.
To prove convergence of (3.7) we require linearized uniqueness (3.8), which we verify as follows.
For
with
We now assume that
and diagonalize the operators 𝒜, 𝒟, ℳ, by means of their eigensystems
We will additionally assume
which is the case, e.g., if
This yields
for
It is straightforward to show that the functions
are linearly independent on 𝐼.
Indeed, assuming
and thus, since the function
of
By the linear independence of
Under a linear independence assumption on the individual eigenspaces (cf., e.g., [12]),
we conclude
which implies
According to [10, Theorem 2.6], we obtain the following.
Let
with 𝑐 as in (3.9).
Moreover, let (3.10) with
Then there exists
Funding source: Austrian Science Fund
Award Identifier / Grant number: DOC78
Funding statement: This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF (https://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002428) under the grant DOC78.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Computational Methods in Applied Mathematics (CMAM 2022 Conference, Part 1)
- Efficient P1-FEM for Any Space Dimension in Matlab
- Adaptive Image Compression via Optimal Mesh Refinement
- Wave Propagation in High-Contrast Media: Periodic and Beyond
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