Many of the modern medical diagnostic and material characterization technologies are a direct result of clever use of ultrasound. Ultrasound, for example, is used very widely as a tool for characterizing tissue in medical applications. It is also used extensively in other applications such as nondestructive testing and fluid flow measurements. The objective of the research described in this thesis is to develop a computer based ultrasound system for characterizing beef tissue for quality grading. Extensive research has been performed with regard to tissue characterization in medical applications. Similar work has also been carried out using ultrasound for structural analysis in material science applications. However, little has been done in applying ultrasound for characterizing beef tissue (quality grading). Thus, the requirements of an ultrasound system and the data processing algorithms are unknown. However, since beef tissue has physical properties that are similar to human tissue, the instrumentation and algorithms for analysis should be similar. This thesis describes the work and results obtained to date in attempting to achieve the stated objective.