Being continuous, or having a continuous range of values.

The analog output signal is voltage output corresponding to the parameter measured by a device. The produced signal is calibrated by a scaling factor.

(ADC) A system that receives analog input data and produces digital values at its output. Analog to digital converters are used by the ultrasound scanner to convert the received signal into a format more compatible with the computer systems.
Ultrasound front-end-systems as well as many others sophisticated electronic systems use these analog signal processing components in connection with e.g., low-noise amplifier (LNA), and time gain compensation amplifier (TGC) as key elements in determining the overall system performance.

See also Digital to Analog Converter, and Digitization.

(DAC) Part of the interface that converts digital numbers from the computer into analog (ordinary) voltages or currents. In ultrasound systems e.g., the high voltage transmit amplifiers that drive the transducers might be controlled by digital to analog converters (DACs) to shape the transmit pulses for better energy delivery to the transducer elements.

The wider the ultrasound beam, the more severe the problem with volume averaging and the beam-width artifact, to avoid this, the ultrasound beam can be shaped with lenses.
Different possibilities to focus the beam:

Conventional multi-element transducers are electronically focused in order to minimize beam width. This transducer type can be focused electronically only along the long axis of the probe where there are multiple elements, along the short axis (elevation axis) are conventional transducers only one element wide. Electronic focusing in any axis requires multiple transducer elements arrayed along that axis. Short axis focusing of conventional multi-element transducers requires an acoustic lens which has a fixed focal length.
For operation at frequencies at or even above 10 MHz, quantization noise reduces contrast resolution. Digital beamforming gives better control over time delay quantization errors. In digital beamformers the delay accuracy is improved, thus allowing higher frequency operation. In analog beamformers, delay accuracy is in the order of 20 ns.
Phased beamformers are suitable to handle linear phased arrays and are used for sector formats such as required in cardiography to improve image quality. Beamforming in ultrasound instruments for medical imaging uses analog delay lines. The signal from each individual element is delayed in order to steer the beam in the desired direction and focuses the beam.
The receive beamformer tracks the depth and focuses the receive beam as the depth increases for each transmitted pulse. The receive aperture increase with depth. The lateral resolution is constant with depth, and decreases the sensitivity to aberrations in the imaged tissue. A requirement for dynamic control of the used elements is given. Since often a weighting function (apodization) is used for side lobe reduction, the element weights also have to be dynamically updated with depth.

See also Huygens Principle.