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Dr. Jason Birnholz is considered one of the founders of diagnostic ultrasound imaging. He began scanning as a clinical fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, initially as a means of identifying coronary artery disease, and later for finding and staging various types of tumors. Following completion of residency training in diagnostic radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Birnholz did graduate study in acoustics and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He subsequently held academic and clinical appointments at Stanford University, Harvard Medical School, and Rush Medical College, lecturing internationally on topics spanning instrumentation, examination technique, and a full range of specific clinical applications. During the last fifteen years, Dr Birnholz has focused on outpatient ultrasound applications, with emphasis on women's health, as the head of Diagnostic Ultrasound Consultants in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Dr. Birnholz is a fellow of the American College of Radiology, a fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists of England, and an associate fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers. A number of firsts in the ultrasound field have been credited to Dr. Birnholz: the introductions of digital ultrasound; phased array ultrasound; computed sonography; the first paper on using ultrasound to identify wall movement abnormalities in patients with myocardial infarction.  He also developed a free-hand technique that is now the standard of practice throughout the world for ultrasound-guided biopsy and catheter placement. Dr. Birnholz used this technique to perform the first minimally invasive fetal surgery procedures ever reported.