The calculation of properties of Bose-Einstein condensates with dipolar
interactions has proven a computationally intensive problem due to the long
range nature of the interactions, limiting the scope of applications. In
particular, the lowest lying Bogoliubov excitations in three dimensional
harmonic trap with cylindrical symmetry were so far computed in an indirect
way, by Fourier analysis of time dependent perturbations, or by approximate
variational methods. We have developed a very fast and accurate numerical
algorithm based on the Hankel transform for calculating properties of dipolar
Bose-Einstein condensates in cylindrically symmetric traps. As an application,
we are able to compute many excitation modes by directly solving the
Bogoliubov-De Gennes equations. We explore the behavior of the excited modes in
different trap geometries. We use these results to calculate the quantum
depletion of the condensate by a combination of a computation of the exact
modes and the use of a local density approximation