Disclosed herein is a system for ablating and characterizing tissue. The system comprises an ablation element configured to emit ablative energy toward a tissue of interest, an imaging apparatus configured to emit energy and collect imaging data including reflected signals from the tissue of interest, and a characterization application. The characterization application comprises a signal analyzer for analyzing the imaging data and determining one or more signal properties from the reflected signals, and a correlation processor configured to associate the one or more signal properties to pre-determined tissue signal properties of different tissue components through a pattern recognition technique. The pre-determined tissue signal properties are embodied in a database, and the correlation processor is configured to identify a tissue component and an ablation level of the tissue of interest based on the pattern recognition technique.