1. Two registries, not one

"MRI certification" in the United States is a duopoly: ARRT and ARMRIT. They are not interchangeable, and the choice has real consequences for licensure, employability, and future credential stacking.

1.1 ARRT (MR)

The American Registry of Radiologic Technologists issues R.T.(MR)(ARRT). This is the credential most United States hospital postings name, that most MRI-specific state licensure statutes accept, and that JRCERT-accredited programs feed.

ARRT is at 1255 Northland Drive, St. Paul, Minnesota 55120-1155. MRI is its third-highest-volume examination: 4,455 total candidates in the 2025 reporting year (3,310 first-time, 1,119 repeat, 26 reinstatement), behind Radiography (17,376) and CT (6,912). [S9]

MRI is one of only two ARRT disciplines — with Vascular Sonography — offering both a primary and a post-primary pathway. That dual structure organizes Parts II and III of this document, because the two routes share almost nothing except the examination itself.

1.2 ARMRIT

The American Registry of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists is a separate, MRI-only body. Founded 1991 as the Registry of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists, Inc. (RMRIT). Not-for-profit. Headquarters at 2444 NW 8th Street, Delray Beach, FL 33445. President and Executive Director: James F. Coffin. More than 4,400 members as of July 2026, with certified technologists in 46 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, Canada, Britain, Asia, and the Middle East. [S14, S16]

Its founding rationale is stated plainly in its own handbook: to serve "qualified MRI Technologists who opt to train specifically in MRI technology without undergoing a Radiology/Radiography oriented background." The post-nominal is simply ARMRIT.

The credential is covered in full in Part X.

1.3 The structural difference that matters for studying

ARRT publishes an auditable, count-weighted blueprint traceable to a formal practice analysis — every content category carries a stated number of scored questions. ARMRIT publishes a topic list with no counts and no weights.

This is not trivia. An ARRT candidate can allocate study time proportionally to a known distribution — and as §14 shows, that distribution is dramatically lopsided toward physics. An ARMRIT candidate works without that map.

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2. Who it is for

Candidates pursuing MRI as their first ARRT credential. No prior R.T. credential required. Governing text (ARRT Education Requirements §1.3): candidates must "successfully complete a formal educational program in the discipline for which credentialing is being pursued and the program must be accredited by a mechanism acceptable to the ARRT." [S7]

Completion is verified by the program director, not the candidate, via the Program Verification Form on the ARRT Educator website.

3. The degree requirement

§1.3.3: candidates graduating on or after 1 January 2015 must hold an associate, baccalaureate, or graduate degree from an institution accredited by an ARRT-acceptable mechanism.

Three clarifications that repeatedly trip candidates:

1. The degree need not be in radiologic sciences. An associate degree in anything satisfies it.
2. It may be earned before, during, or after the program — but must be awarded before ARRT grants exam eligibility.
3. It does not apply to the post-primary pathway. The existing supporting credential substitutes.

3.1 Recognized accreditors

Programmatic: JRCERT (recognized since 1969; the only agency recognized by both the U.S. Department of Education and CHEA for accrediting magnetic resonance programs), JRCNMT (since 2011), CAAHEP (on recommendation of specialized committees in diagnostic medical sonography and cardiovascular technology).

Institutional/degree: ACCJC, HLC, SACSCOC, MSCHE. [S7]

3.2 Two three-year clocks

• Clock 1: three years after program completion to earn the degree and apply.
• Clock 2: once eligible, three more years and three attempts to pass.

Missing either requires requalifying from the beginning.

4. Didactic and clinical competency requirements

Governing document: MRI Didactic and Clinical Competency Requirements, Board Approved January 2024, Implementation 1 February 2025, V 2026.07.30. [S2]

4.1 The transition rule — critical for 2026 graduates

Candidates completing their program during 2025 or 2026 may use either the 2020 requirements or the 2025 requirements. Candidates graduating after 31 January 2027 must use the 2025 requirements.

A 2026 graduate has a genuine strategic choice and should compare both documents against their actual clinical log before deciding.

4.2 The five competency blocks

4.3 General patient care (7)

BLS/CPR · Vital Signs · Sterile Technique · Standard Precautions · Transfer of Patient · Care of Patient Medical Equipment · Venipuncture

Candidates must be BLS/CPR certified and demonstrate competence in the remaining six. Performed on patients where possible; simulation acceptable where regulation prohibits patient performance.

4.4 The 17 mandatory imaging procedures

Evaluated while scanning actual patients. No volunteers, no simulation.

Brain · Internal Auditory Canals · Pituitary · Vascular Head MRA · Vascular Neck · Cervical Spine · Thoracic Spine · Lumbar Spine · Liver · MRCP · Shoulder · Wrist · Hip · Knee · Ankle · Foot · Image Postprocessing (MIP, MPR, subtraction)

4.5 The 32 electives — choose 12

Orbits · Cranial Nerves (non-IACs) · Vascular Head MRV · Brain Perfusion · Brain Spectroscopy · Soft Tissue Neck · Spinal Trauma · Total Spine · Sacrum-Coccyx · Sacroiliac Joints · Chest (noncardiac) · Breast · Vascular Thorax · Brachial Plexus · Pancreas · Adrenals · Kidneys · Enterography · Vascular Abdomen · Female Soft Tissue Pelvis · Male Soft Tissue Pelvis · TMJs · Sternum/SC Joints · Long Bones (Upper Extremity) · Elbow · Hand · Finger/Thumb · Bony Pelvis · Long Bones (Lower Extremity) · Arthrogram · Soft Tissue (tumor, infection) · CINE

Up to 5 electives may be performed on volunteers, given an institutional policy protecting both volunteer and institution.

4.6 The verification standard

"The program director or the program director's designee must directly observe the candidate performing the procedure. The observation must occur in person, with both the candidate and the program director or designee physically present at the same location. Remote observation or virtual presence is not acceptable."

Competence means performed "independently, consistently, and effectively." Competency records are retained by the program and are not sent to ARRT.

4.7 Simulation and patient diversity

Simulation means the task performed "on a live human being, using the same level of cognitive, psychomotor, and effective skills required for performing a procedure on a patient in a clinical setting standardized to mirror the physical facilities where practice occurs." Same direct-observation criteria apply.

§4.1.1 requires competence demonstrated across "variations in patient characteristics such as age, gender, and medical condition."

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5. The supporting category

Governing text §1.4: candidates "must already be credentialed in a relevant discipline (called the supporting category), must document relevant clinical experience in the discipline being pursued, must document completion of specified education, and must do so within specified time limits." [S7]

Five supporting categories accepted for MRI:

ARDMS credentials named as acceptable: RDMS, RVT, RDCS, RMSKS.

The condition that ends careers: candidates "must maintain certification and registration in the supporting category at all times." A lapse — a missed CE biennium, an unpaid renewal — destroys MRI eligibility, including for a candidate already mid-process.

6. Structured education

Governing document: Structured Education Requirements — MRI, Implementation 1 February 2025, V 2024.07.01. [S3]

16 CE credits, earned within the 24 months immediately preceding application.

At least 1 credit in each of the four categories:

Remaining 12 from any combination. ARRT's published acceptable distributions: (3/2/4/7), (1/1/1/13), (1/5/5/5).

Acceptable providers: academic courses from an ARRT-recognized accredited institution; CE approved by an ARRT-recognized CE Approver (RCEEM) or state entity; or a combination.

Academic conversion: 12 CE credits per quarter credit; 16 CE credits per semester credit.

Documentation: logged at apps.arrt.org/postprimary/. ARRT "typically review and approve submissions within two business days."

Two efficiencies:

• Structured education hours simultaneously count toward the biennial CE requirement. Sixteen hours is two-thirds of a 24-credit biennium.
• A grandfathering clause lets a candidate continue using an older document if they completed at least one activity before a new version's effective date.

7. Clinical experience

Governing document: MRI Clinical Experience Requirements, Implementation 1 February 2025, V 2026.08.04, © 2026. [S1]

7.1 The arithmetic

• 125 total repetitions minimum
• 49 procedures available across 6 categories
• Minimum 21 different procedures
• Minimum 3, maximum 6 repetitions each — "less than 3 will not be counted"
• Maximum 7 procedures documented per day
• No more than 1 procedure per patient per day. ARRT's example: an order for MRA head and neck yields one documentable procedure, including postprocessing.
• All within the 24 months immediately preceding application

ARRT's two worked examples:

• Candidate A: 21 procedures × 6 reps = 126
• Candidate B: 42 procedures, most at 3 reps, reaching ≥125

Candidate A requires the least procedure variety and is the practical target for a technologist cross-training in a department with a narrow case mix.

7.2 Exclusions

• MRI in conjunction with PET, radiation therapy planning, or LINAC is not eligible
• Remote scanning is not acceptable. "The candidate must be physically present during the examination or procedure." Added February 2025, directly responding to the growth of remote scanning operations.

7.3 Verification — why post-primary is easier here

Verified by an ARRT certified and registered technologist (post-primary certification not required) or an interpreting physician. Critically:

"Clinical verifiers are not required to directly observe the candidate performing the procedure and may perform their verification responsibilities remotely."

The mirror image of the primary pathway's in-person rule, and what makes cross-training logistically feasible for a working technologist.

Once the application is approved and a window assigned, procedures are locked in and will not expire.

7.4 The 49 procedures

A. Head and Neck (11): brain · IACs · pituitary · orbits · cranial nerves (non-IACs) · vascular head MRA · vascular head MRV · brain perfusion · brain spectroscopy · soft tissue neck · vascular neck

B. Spine (7): cervical · thoracic · lumbar · total spine · spinal trauma · sacrum-coccyx · SI joints

C. Thorax (4): chest (noncardiac) · breast · vascular thorax · brachial plexus

D. Abdomen and Pelvis (9): liver · pancreas · MRCP · adrenals · kidneys · enterography · vascular abdomen · female soft tissue pelvis · male soft tissue pelvis

E. Musculoskeletal (16): TMJs · sternum/SC joints · shoulder · long bones (upper) · elbow · wrist · hand · finger/thumb · bony pelvis · hip · long bones (lower) · knee · ankle · foot · arthrogram · soft tissue

F. Additional (2): image postprocessing · CINE

7.5 The two mandatory blocks (identical in both pathways)

MRI Safety — 8 areas: screening patients/personnel/non-personnel for MR Safe, MR Conditional, MR Unsafe devices · identify MR safety zones · static field (translational and rotational forces) · RF field (thermal heating [SAR], coil positioning, patient positioning, insulation) · gradient fields (induced current, auditory) · communication and monitoring (sedated patients, verbal/visual contact, vital signs) · contrast media safety (NSF, renal function) · other (cryogen safety, fire, medical emergencies, laser alignment lights, quench)

MRI Quality Control — 7 activities (first four on a phantom): Signal to Noise Ratio · Center Frequency · Transmitter Gain or Attenuation · Geometric Accuracy · Equipment Inspection (coils, cables, door seals) · Monitor Cryogen Levels · Room Temperature and Humidity

Both blocks may be verified by an ARRT registered technologist, a medical physicist, or an interpreting physician.

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8. Standards of Ethics

ARRT Standards of Ethics, last revised and published 31 March 2026. [S8]

Structure: Preamble · Statement of Purpose · Code of Ethics (11 aspirational principles) · Rules of Ethics (22 mandatory, enforceable rules) · Administrative Procedures.

Applies to current registrants, former registrants, applicants, and explicitly to persons who submit an Ethics Review Preapplication.

8.1 What triggers a review

Broader than most candidates assume:

• Felony or misdemeanor charges or convictions — including speeding and parking violations if charged as misdemeanors or felonies
• Traffic violations involving drugs or alcohol
• Military court-martial convictions
• Honor code violations at an institution attended to meet ARRT requirements
• Charges or convictions stayed, withheld, deferred, set aside, or suspended
• Offenses before age 18 processed in juvenile court
• State or federal narcotics/controlled-substance violations — "even if not charged or convicted" (Rule 18)
• Rule 21: knowing of another registrant's violation and failing to report it
• Rule 22: failing to immediately report an imaging or treatment error to a supervisor

Excluded: speeding and parking tickets not charged as misdemeanors/felonies and not involving drugs or alcohol.

Reporting deadline: within 30 calendar days of occurrence.

8.2 The Ethics Review Preapplication

• Optional; $100 nonrefundable
• May be submitted any time. ARRT recommends "before or shortly after starting an educational program."
• "The ethics review process can take a significant amount of time — sometimes three months or longer."
• Three documentation checklists: criminal violation, regulatory agency violation, honor code violation
• A candidate under review may sit for an exam, "but we'll hold your scores until the review is complete, and we might cancel your scores depending on the outcome"
• Do not submit ethics documentation before submitting a Preapplication or full Application

ARRT's own reassurance, worth reproducing because fear of this process causes multi-year delays: "Most people who report potential problems aren't deemed ineligible. And most registrants don't have their credentials revoked."

Practical guidance: file at the start of the program, not the end. Three-plus months of review discovered in the final semester costs an application cycle.

8.3 Committee process

Five Trustees (3 members, 2 alternates), one-year terms; Chair serves up to two years. The Chair screens preliminarily and may summarily dismiss where information is insufficient, allegations are patently frivolous or inconsequential, or allegations if true would not constitute a violation.

30 days from the mailing of a notice of proposed action to request a hearing in writing with a nonrefundable fee. Failure constitutes consent. Appeals go to the Board of Trustees.

9. Fees

Note the $450 tier. A sonographer or nuclear medicine technologist using an ARDMS or NMTCB credential rather than an ARRT one pays double. A sonographer who holds ARRT (S) rather than only ARDMS RDMS saves $225.

There is no published late fee — the mechanism is reapplication at full price for each new window. [S26]

10. Candidate Status Report and the exam window

10.1 CSR

Contains identification, ARRT ID, the eligibility period (three years, up to three attempts), and exam window dates.

• Posted to the online account typically within two business days
• Wait 24 hours after posting before scheduling — "that gives Pearson time to receive our authorization"
• Not received within two business days: call 651.687.0048
• The name on the CSR must be identical to both forms of ID at the test center

10.2 The window is 365 days, not 90

A persistent piece of misinformation holds that ARRT grants a 90-day window. It does not. Both 2026 handbooks specify 365 calendar days.

Closes automatically when:

1. 365 calendar days elapse
2. An appointment is missed without required notice
3. The candidate does not respond to the nondisclosure agreement within two minutes of accessing it
4. The candidate is turned away over an ID issue

A window closing unused forfeits the fee but does not count as an attempt. Reapplication and a new fee required. With fewer than 30 days left in the three-year eligibility period, the candidate must requalify entirely. Reapplication must arrive at least 30 calendar days before eligibility expires.

Primary-pathway windows begin when both program and degree are complete; applying online, "your window will begin within two calendar days."

10.3 Pearson VUE and test day

More than 200 high-security test centers across the United States and its territories.

Arrival: at least 30 minutes early. "You may have to forfeit your appointment if you're more than 15 minutes late."

Identification: two forms of valid, unexpired, acceptable ID. You sign the ARRT Candidate Rules Agreement on a digital signature pad, and a photograph and palm-vein scan are taken.

Prohibited — everything goes in a secure locker: all pocket contents, calculators, study guides, cell phones and electronics, personal items. Outerwear — jackets, windbreakers, hooded sweatshirts — is barred from the testing room. Dress in layers you can keep on.

Provided:

• Erasable note board and pen. Replaced on request; may not leave the room. Guidance: don't write on it until after you accept the nondisclosure agreement.
• Calculator: on-screen, both scientific and basic four-function; a physical basic four-function calculator may be requested from staff. Personal calculators are prohibited — do not bring one.

Before the exam: a tutorial, then two minutes to respond to the nondisclosure agreement. Miss the two-minute window and you forfeit that day's attempt. This is the sharpest edge in the entire process and it is trivially avoidable.

Note: the handbook exam-format table lists an 8-minute tutorial; ARRT's Exam Day page describes an 18-minute tutorial. Unresolved. Plan for the longer figure and arrive early.

Breaks: permitted, but the exam clock keeps running. No scheduled breaks between sections. "If you're gone longer than 10 minutes, the testing center staff will file an Incident Report with ARRT."

After: "You'll see a preliminary score on your computer. This is not your final score." Official results by email within about 10 business days.

ADA accommodations — timing is gated. Request during the application process and before ARRT assigns your exam window. Answer "yes" when asked whether you have a disability, then follow the prompts. This cannot be added later, so the decision must be made before you apply.

Rescheduling: cancel or reschedule at least 24 hours (one business day) before the appointment. Pearson VUE charges a per-reschedule fee.

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11. Format

230 minutes ÷ 230 items = exactly one minute per item. The single most useful pacing number, and it means the exam is not generous with time.

11.1 A documented contradiction in ARRT's own materials

The 2026 Post-primary Handbook (p. 46) still lists MRI as 200 scored + 20 pilot = 220 total, 210 minutes, contradicting both the Content Specifications footnote and the Primary Handbook — despite both handbooks carrying the same January 2026 build date.

Resolution: ARRT's news release of 27 March 2024 states, for changes effective 1 February 2025: "The number of scored questions remains the same and the number of pilots increased from 20 to 30." The Content Specifications footnote 2 independently states 30.

The Primary Handbook is correct; the Post-primary Handbook's values are stale. Plan for 230 items and 4 hr 10 min in either pathway. Flagged rather than silently resolved, because a candidate planning for 210 minutes and receiving 230 items will mismanage pacing. [S5, S6, S12]

12. Scoring

• Scaled scores, range 1 to 99.
• A total scaled score of 75 passes all ARRT exams. The cut score is set by the Board of Trustees through formal standard setting with subject-matter-expert input.
• 75 scaled does NOT mean 75% correct. For MRI, ARRT's published "approximate % correct to pass" is 66% — roughly 132 of 200 scored items.
• Section scores run 0.1 to 9.9 in tenth-point intervals. ARRT: "a section score of 8.1 [is] equivalent to a scaled score of 81 had that section made up the entire exam."
• The overall score derives from total items correct, not from averaging sections — a strong performance on the 40-item Physical Principles section moves the total far more than the same performance on the 15-item Body section.
• MRI currently has no section-level minimum. (Only Sonography does.) This changes in 2028 — see §15.
• Answer everything. ARRT: "Your score is based on the number of correct answers you give, so it's in your best interest to answer all the questions, even if you must guess." Thirty pilot items are indistinguishable from scored ones, so no item can be safely dismissed.

13. Score reporting

• An unofficial preliminary score appears on-screen at the test center. "You're the only person who sees that score. You can't print your preliminary score, and once you leave the preliminary score screen, you won't be able to retrieve the score."
• Official results arrive by email with a secure link. The account shows total scaled score, section-level breakdown, and a secure personalized sharing link for employers or schools.
• The Verify Credentials page reflects status "within about four weeks."
• Passers receive a physical packet: welcome letter, certificate, and a QR code to the Guide to Maintaining Your ARRT Credential.
• Score appeal: postmarked within 14 calendar days of the score report date. ARRT re-verifies the answer key and recalculates raw and scaled scores. A candidate may have an appeal in process OR an open exam window — not both.
• ARRT may cancel scores or hold results for six months in irregularity cases. Where a technical problem is ARRT's fault, "we'll cancel your original score and allow you to retake the exam at no cost."

14. The content specifications — the full blueprint

Examination Content Specifications — MRI, Board Approved January 2024, Implementation 1 February 2025, V 2024.03.05. [S4]

14.1 The weighting

* ARRT does not publish percentages. These are arithmetic (count ÷ 200) and should not be cited as ARRT figures.

The headline finding of this report: Image Production is 53% of the examination. More than half the registry is physics and image formation. Procedures — the anatomy and protocol content that feels most like the daily job — is 28.5%. Patient Care and Safety together are 18.5%.

Candidates over-weight anatomy and protocols because that is what they do at work. The exam is not weighted like the job. A study plan not allocating roughly half its hours to physics is misaligned with the blueprint.

14.2 PATIENT CARE — 16 questions

A. Ethical and Legal Aspects

• Patients' rights — informed consent (written, oral, implied); confidentiality (HIPAA); AHA Patient Care Partnership: privacy, extent of care (DNR), access to information, living will / health care proxy / advance directive, research participation
• Legal issues — verification (patient identification, order vs. clinical indication, exam coding); terminology (battery, negligence, malpractice, beneficence); doctrines (respondeat superior, res ipsa loquitur); restraints versus positioning aids used to eliminate motion artifact
• ARRT Standards of Ethics

B. Interpersonal Communication

• Modes — verbal/written; nonverbal (eye contact, touching)
• Challenges — language barriers; cultural and social factors; physical, sensory, cognitive impairments; age; emotional status and acceptance of condition including mental health concerns; explanation of medical terms; strategies to improve understanding
• Patient education — purpose, exam length, risks, benefits; pre- and post-procedure instructions; review of pertinent medical history; responding to inquiries about other modalities; communication during the procedure

C. Physical Assistance and Monitoring

• Body ergonomics; transfer techniques; safe patient handling devices
• Medical equipment — infusion catheters and pumps; oxygen delivery; nasogastric tubes, urinary catheters, tracheostomy tubes
• Monitoring and documentation — vital signs; physical signs and symptoms; fall prevention; comfort and privacy; sedated patients and sedation; claustrophobic patients; time-out (added Feb 2025)

D. Medical Emergencies — allergic reactions (contrast, latex) · cardiac/respiratory arrest (CPR, AED) · physical injury, trauma, or RF burn · other disorders (seizures, diabetic reactions) · communication of critical findings to health care team (added Feb 2025)

E. Infection Control

• Chain of infection — pathogen; reservoir; susceptible host; portal of entry; transmission (direct: droplet, contact; indirect: airborne, vehicle-borne/fomite, vector-borne mechanical or biological; portal of exit)
• Asepsis — disinfection; sterilization; medical aseptic technique; sterile technique
• CDC Standard Precautions — hand hygiene; PPE; contaminated equipment and surfaces; disposal; safe injection practices
• Transmission-based precautions — contact; droplet; airborne
• Additional — neutropenic (reverse) isolation; healthcare-associated infections

F. Toxic or Hazardous Material — chemicals (disinfectants); chemotherapy; safety data sheets

G. Pharmacology

• Patient history — medication reconciliation; premedications; contraindications; scheduling and prioritizing
• Administration — routes (IV, oral); supplies; venipuncture; dose calculation; power injector (fluoro-triggering, timing bolus, automatic bolus tracking)
• Contrast media types and properties (gadolinium, linear versus macrocyclic, ionic versus nonionic)
• Appropriateness — patient condition; age and weight; laboratory values (BUN, creatinine, eGFR)
• Complications — local (extravasation/infiltration, phlebitis); systemic graded mild/moderate/severe; emergency medications; technologist response and documentation

Scope note: NSF and gadolinium deposition are not named line items in the exam specifications. NSF appears only in the clinical documents. The exam reaches that territory through linear-versus-macrocyclic classification and eGFR screening. ACR zones are worded as "designated MR safety zones."

14.3 SAFETY — 21 questions

A. Screening and Education (patients, personnel, non-personnel)

• Biomedical implants (active, passive) — identify and document device, year, make, model; verify labeling (MR Safe, MR Conditional, MR Unsafe); identify device-specific parameters
• Ferrous foreign bodies
• Medical conditions (pregnancy)
• Prior diagnostic or surgical procedures
• Topical or externally applied items (tattoos, medication patches, body piercing jewelry, monitoring devices, clothing)
• Level 1 and Level 2 MR personnel

B. Electromagnetic Fields

• Static — translational and rotational forces; magnetohydrodynamic effect; magnetohemodynamic effect; magnetic shielding; spatial gradient of the static field; FDA guidelines
• RF — thermal heating (SAR); conductive loops; proximity burns; RF shielding; FDA guidelines
• Gradient — current induction; acoustic noise; peripheral nerve stimulation; magnetophosphenes; FDA guidelines

C. Equipment — placement of conductors (ECG leads, coils, cables); cryogen safety; ancillary equipment classification

D. Environment — climate control; designated MR safety zones; gauss lines; emergency procedures (quench, fire)

14.4 IMAGE PRODUCTION — 106 questions

Physical Principles of Image Formation (40)

A. Instrumentation — electromagnetism (Faraday's law); static magnet types (superconductive, resistive, permanent), field strength, shim coils; RF system (coil configuration, surface coils, phased array coils, transmit and receive coils, transmit and receive bandwidth, pulse profile); gradient system (coil configuration, slew rate, rise time, duty cycle)

B. Fundamentals

• Nuclear magnetism — Larmor equation; precession; gyromagnetic ratio; resonance; RF pulse; equilibrium magnetization; energy state transitions; phase coherence; free induction decay; magnetic susceptibility (diamagnetism, paramagnetism, superparamagnetism, ferromagnetism)
• Tissue characteristics — T1 recovery; T2 decay; T2*; proton (spin) density; flow; diffusion; perfusion
• Spatial localization — vectors; X, Y, Z coordinates; physical gradient; slice select gradient; phase-encoding gradient; frequency (readout) gradient; sampling frequency/rate; k-space

C. Artifacts — cause, appearance, compensation. ARRT flags the list as not exhaustive: aliasing (wrap-around) · Gibbs/truncation · chemical shift · chemical misregistration · magnetic susceptibility · radiofrequency (zipper) · motion and flow (patient motion, ghosting) · partial volume averaging · cross-talk · cross-excitation · moiré pattern · parallel imaging artifacts · eddy currents · dielectric effect

"Magic angle" is not listed — it appears in many prep resources but not in ARRT's blueprint.

D. Quality Control — slice thickness · spatial resolution · contrast resolution · signal to noise · center frequency · transmit gain · geometric accuracy · equipment inspection

Sequence Parameters and Options (36)

A. Imaging Parameters (18) — TR · TE · TI · NSA/NEX · flip angle · FOV · matrix · pixel · voxel · number of slices · slice thickness and gap · phase and frequency · echo train length · effective TE · bandwidth (transmit, receive) · concatenations · b-value · velocity encoding (VENC)

B. Image Contrast — T1 · T2 · PD · T2* · DWI · SWI

C. Imaging Options — 2D and 3D · slice order (sequential, interleaved) · spatial saturation pulse/band · gradient moment nulling · suppression techniques (fat, water, Dixon) · physiologic gating and triggering · in-phase and out-of-phase · rectangular FOV · anti-aliasing · parallel imaging · filtering

ARRT's own sidebar is the most important sentence in the blueprint for study strategy: questions address the interdependence of the imaging parameters, weightings, and options, and how they affect image quality — CNR, SNR, spatial resolution, and acquisition time.

This is the trade-off matrix. Rote memorization of what TR means will not answer these items. See §27.2.

Data Acquisition, Processing, and Storage (30)

A. Pulse Sequences

• Spin echo — conventional; fast spin echo
• Inversion recovery — STIR, FLAIR
• Gradient echo — conventional; spoiled; coherent; SSFP; fast gradient echo; MRA/MRV (flow dynamics, time-of-flight, phase contrast, contrast enhanced)
• EPI · DWI · SWI · perfusion · spectroscopy

DTI and fMRI/BOLD are not named anywhere in the specifications. Diffusion appears only as DWI, ADC mapping, and b-value.

B. Data Manipulation — k-space mapping and filling (centric, spiral, keyhole); fast Fourier transformation; Nyquist theorem (added Feb 2025); postprocessing (MIP, MPR, subtraction, ADC mapping, CINE)

C. Informatics — hard/electronic copy (DICOM); archive; PACS/MIMPS and EMR; security and confidentiality; networking

14.5 PROCEDURES — 57 questions

Neurological (25)

• Head and Neck — brain · brain for MS · brain for seizure · infant brain (under one year) · brain perfusion · CSF flow · brain spectroscopy · IACs · pituitary · orbits · cranial nerves (non-IACs) · sinuses · soft tissue neck (parotids, thyroid) · vascular head (MRA, MRV) · vascular neck (MRA, MRV)
• Spine — cervical · thoracic · lumbar · SI joints · sacrum-coccyx · total spine · lumbar plexus

Body (15)

• Thorax — chest (noncardiac) · breast · vascular thorax · brachial plexus
• Abdomen — liver · pancreas · adrenals · kidneys · enterography · vascular abdomen · MRCP
• Pelvis — soft tissue pelvis (bladder, rectum) · female soft tissue pelvis (uterus) · male soft tissue pelvis (prostate) · vascular pelvis

There is no cardiac MRI category. "Chest (noncardiac)" is explicit. A significant scope boundary that saves considerable wasted study.

Musculoskeletal (17) — TMJs · sternum · SC joints · shoulder · long bones (upper) · elbow · wrist · hand · fingers (non-thumb) · thumb · bony pelvis · hip · long bones (lower) · knee · ankle · foot · arthrogram · vascular extremities (runoff MRA) · soft tissue (tumor, infection) (added Feb 2025)

The Procedures "Focus of Questions" sidebar, printed identically on both Procedures pages, defines what an item about any listed study may ask:

• Anatomy and Physiology: imaging planes; pathological considerations; protocol considerations; patient considerations (pediatric, geriatric, bariatric, trauma)
• Patient Set-Up: patient data input; coil selection and position; patient orientation; landmarking; physiologic gating and triggering
• Contrast Media: effect on images
• Additional Procedures: CINE; surgical planning

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15. Pass rates and section performance

ARRT Annual Exam Report – 2025 and – 2024. All statistics are first-attempt only: "ARRT uses the first attempt because it is the only one that all candidates are guaranteed to see." [S9, S10]

15.1 Volume and pass rate

The trend reads clearly: pass rate is flat-to-slightly-up and remarkably stable in a 73–75% band across three years, while candidate volume grew ~20% in two years. The mean scaled score has moved less than half a point across three reports — ARRT's scaling is doing its job.

ARRT does not split MRI into primary vs post-primary in the annual report. The 3,310 figure is both pathways combined, and no pathway-level pass-rate breakdown appears to be published.

15.1a Percentile ranks — MRI, 2025

The pass point of 75 falls between the 25th and 30th percentile — internally consistent with the 74.8% pass rate. Useful framing: passing requires roughly bottom-quartile-plus performance, but the distribution is tight, so small score gains move you several percentiles.

Program-level data: the 2025 report's Educational Program Mean Performance Percentile table covers N = 52 programs — the programs that had MRI primary-pathway candidates that year. Program medians: 50th percentile 82, 90th 89, 10th 73.

15.2 Section performance — 2025, post-February-2025 specifications

The weakest area nationally is Data Acquisition, Processing, and Storage (7.5) — k-space filling strategies, the fast Fourier transform, the Nyquist theorem, and the pulse-sequence taxonomy. Thirty questions, 15% of the exam, and where the average candidate loses the most ground.

The strongest is MRI Screening and Safety (8.4). Safety is well taught and well drilled — reassuring clinically, and a poor place to invest marginal study hours under the current blueprint.

Why Data Acquisition underperforms (analysis, not cited fact): its topics are the most abstract on the exam and the least reinforced by daily clinical work. A technologist can scan competently for years without thinking about centric versus sequential k-space filling. That gap between clinical competence and examination content is the structural cause.

15.3 Cross-discipline context (2025)

Mammography 91% · Radiography 86% · Breast Sonography 78% · Radiation Therapy 77% · MRI 75% · CT 75% · Radiologist Assistant 75% · Vascular Sonography 72% · Bone Densitometry 67% · Nuclear Medicine 65% · Vascular Interventional 61% · Sonography 55% · Cardiac Interventional 53%

MRI sits mid-pack — harder than Radiography, easier than Sonography. A one-in-four first-attempt failure rate does not support casual preparation.

16. The proposed 2028 overhaul — announced 17 August 2026

ARRT opened a comment period on substantial proposed changes to all three MRI documents, for implementation 1 February 2028. Comments close 2 October 2026 via online survey. [S11]

Anyone whose timeline extends past early 2028 — which includes most students entering a program now — must plan against these.

16.1 Examination Content Specifications

• Safety questions increase from 21 to 40 — nearly doubling
• The Safety section will carry its own separate passing requirement. A structural change: MRI would join Sonography as a section-gated exam, meaning a candidate could achieve a passing total scaled score and still fail on Safety alone.
• Added: physiologic reactions (medical emergencies); laboratory specimens (pharmacology); brain tumor/metastases (neurological); iron quantification (body)
• Removed: spectroscopy from data acquisition

16.2 Clinical Competency (primary)

• Mandatory procedures 17 → 30
• Required electives 12 → 10
• Simulatable procedures 5 → 8
• Five new QC procedures; Signal to Noise Ratio removed from QC

16.3 Clinical Experience (post-primary)

• 13 new procedures — CSF flow, iron quantification, vascular procedures, scapula, thumb
• Brain spectroscopy and CINE removed
• Four QC procedures added

16.4 Interpretation

The direction is unmistakable: safety is being elevated from a modest 10.5% slice to a nearly 20% gated requirement. This tracks the 2024/2026 ACR safety manual revisions, the growth of remote scanning, and escalating implanted-device complexity. Any program or study resource treating safety as an easy section will be badly calibrated by 2028. The §27.1 study allocation table is explicitly current-blueprint only for that reason.

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17. The ACR Manual on MR Safety

Current version: 2024 edition, updated March 2026. ACR Committee on MR Safety. 152 pp.

A version subtlety worth stating precisely: the cover reads 2024, the copyright page reads © 2026, and the change log is titled "ACR Manual on MR Safety Updated March 2026." Cite as 2024 edition, updated March 2026. The 2024 revision replaced all earlier versions and moved from periodic manuscript publication to a continuously updatable online manual. [S17, S18]

Peer-reviewed companion: Pedrosa I, Altman DA, Dillman JR, Hoff MN, McKinney AM, Reeder SB, Rogg JM, Stafford RJ, Webb JA, Hernandez DL, Watson RE. "American College of Radiology Manual on MR Safety: 2024 Update and Revisions." Radiology 2025;315(1). doi:10.1148/radiol.241405 [S19]

17.1 The zones

Zone III access is by key lock or RFID badge; combination locks are specifically not recommended because codes leak. Zone III is also ascribed to any area where the MR Environment egresses beyond Zone IV's physical walls — equipment rooms, floors above and below.

Zone IV requires a prominently displayed red illuminated sign, "The Magnet is Always On," with battery backup; the door closed and preferably locked when not actively monitored, but unlockable from inside; and an accessible emergency call button.

17.2 The 9-gauss change, explained properly

Historically the 5 G / 0.5 mT line was the "pacemaker line" (IEC 60601-2-33:2002). IEC 60601-2-33:2022 revised the fringe-field limit to 9 gauss (0.9 mT), because CIED manufacturers must demonstrate immunity to 10 G (1.0 mT) under ISO 14117:2019 — 9 G allows 1 G tolerance in the pacemaker test method. FDA recognizes the 9 G line as defining the B₀ hazard area, and the ACR MR Safety Committee endorses it.

Direction matters: 9 G is inside 5 G, closer to the magnet. Sites already using a 5 G boundary need no adjustment. Prep materials published before 2025 will still teach 5 G; know both and know which document each belongs to.

17.3 MR Personnel

• Non-MR Personnel — have not completed MRMD-defined formal MR safety education within the previous 12 months. Includes patients, visitors, facility staff, and radiologists and technologists who don't meet MR Personnel criteria.
• Level 1 — educated and having mastered MR safety topics per the MRMD, sufficient not to endanger self or others. Must regularly and routinely work in the MR environment to maintain status — "a single annual lecture and rarely performing a role in the MR environment may be insufficient."
• Level 2 — more extensively trained, including RF thermal loading/burns and peripheral nerve stimulation from rapidly changing gradients (wording revised in the 2026 update from "direct neuromuscular excitation"). Level 2 supervise Level 1. MR Technologists and MR Radiologists are required to be Level 2.

Access rule: Level 1 MR Personnel may not directly admit or be responsible for non-MR Personnel. Zone III/IV access by non-MR Personnel is controlled entirely by Level 2.

Staffing: minimum one Level 2 technologist per scanner during routine hours, plus at least one additional MR Personnel (Level 1 or 2) remaining in Zone III.

2026 change: MR safety screening prior to Zone III/IV entry, proper FMDS use, and implant/device safety factors were reclassified as Level 2 training elements.

17.4 The three safety roles

• MR Medical Director (MRMD) — a licensed physician. Owns facility operational safety; appoints the MRSO and advisory MRSE; defines training; makes the final determination on MRI eligibility; maintains adverse-event records and analysis.
• MR Safety Officer (MRSO) — "suitably trained individual, often an MR Technologist." Day-to-day enforcement. Multiple MRSOs permitted; a single MRSO should be identified per location per shift.
• MR Safety Expert (MRSE) — technical/physics resource, often an MR physicist; explicitly excludes contrast agents, anxiolytics, and other pharmaceuticals. May be external and need not be physically present, but must be prospectively identified and contactable.
• MR Safety Committee — reviews adverse events and near-misses regularly.

All three roles should be prospectively named.

17.5 Screening

• FMDS (ferromagnetic detection system) recommended prior to entering both Zone III and Zone IV, as an adjunct to and never a replacement for other screening. FMDS cannot reliably differentiate ferromagnetic from non-ferromagnetic material.
• Orbital screening: patients with a history of orbital trauma by a potential ferromagnetic foreign body for which they sought medical attention require orbits evaluated by a single orbit radiograph (more views as needed) or CT. MR images alone are insufficient to clear orbits.
• Also screened: penetrating injury and unspecified metallic foreign bodies including bullets and shrapnel; diaphragms; cosmetics containing metallic particles (eye makeup, magnetic eyelashes).
• Full Stop and Final Check — two-tiered, modeled on the surgical Universal Protocol. Routine: standard ambulatory screening before Zone IV entry. Augmented: complex cases, requiring verbal review and acknowledgment by a second team member.

17.6 Remote scanning

New formal guidance: a Level 2 MR Technologist must retain full console control; "direct, in-person patient monitoring should be continuous when scanning is performed remotely"; and a single remote operator should not scan multiple patients simultaneously.

This parallels ARRT's February 2025 prohibition on counting remotely-performed procedures (§7.2) and IAC's 2025 standards (§21). Three bodies are moving in coordination.

17.7 Other 2024/2026 content

• Implants: review manufacturer information thoroughly; "increasing number and complexity" makes universal rules impractical. All passive metal implants are MR Conditional or MR Unsafe.
• Ferromagnetic objects: emphasis on tethering equipment in Zones III/IV. Critical nuance — tethers are location reminders, not safety restraints. A tether will not stop a projectile.
• Alternative environments: PET/MR, MR-LINAC/radiation oncology, intraoperative/interventional, 5–7 T ultrahigh field, 0.55 T low field, <0.1 T ultralow-field point-of-care.
• 7 T transient bioeffects: vertigo (most common), dizziness, nausea, nystagmus, magnetophosphenes, electrogustatory (metallic taste). All transient, no permanent effects observed. Mitigated by slow table velocity and minimizing head motion (Lenz-effect mediated).
• New MR Pre-Appointment appendix (March 2026), plus facility design checklists and policy templates.
• Contrast: the manual's Chapter 9 is a one-page pointer that defers all GBCA policy to the ACR Manual on Contrast Media. Its only independent rule: "No patient is to be administered prescription MR contrast agents without orders from a licensed physician or advanced practice provider practicing under a supervising physician."

17.8 Emergencies

Four distinct controls, each requiring an SOP: Emergency Stop (halts scanning and table motion), Emergency Power Off (cuts electrical power), Emergency Magnet Off / Quench, plus fire and clinical-deterioration response.

• Quench dissipates enormous energy as cryogen rapidly expands and vents. The field may change unexpectedly during a quench, and different designs quench at different rates. Newer low-cryogen magnets vent a relatively small volume into the room and need no external vent pipe.
• Fire: all conventional extinguishers and untested firefighting equipment are prohibited in Zones III/IV. Only an MR Conditional extinguisher may be used, "IF SAFE TO DO SO." Facilities must prospectively educate local firefighters, fire marshals, and police — responders arrive with air tanks, axes, and crowbars. Evacuate if instructed by the fire department.

18. Contrast — the ACR Manual on Contrast Media

Current version: 2026 (© 2026 ACR Committee on Drugs and Contrast Media, 126 pp). Chapter 15 covers adverse reactions to GBCM; Chapter 16 is the NSF chapter, carrying a 2025 update tag — that tag is what secondary sources mistook for the manual's version. [S20]

18.1 The GBCA groups — corrected

Correction to an earlier version of this document, which placed gadopiclenol in Group III. That was wrong. Primary ACR Table 1:

Group I — associated with the greatest number of NSF cases (all linear):

• Gadodiamide (Omniscan, GE) — linear non-ionic
• Gadopentetate dimeglumine (Magnevist, Bayer) — linear ionic
• Gadoversetamide (OptiMARK, Guerbet) — linear non-ionic

Group II — few, if any, unconfounded NSF cases:

• Gadobenate dimeglumine (MultiHance, Bracco) — linear ionic
• Gadobutrol (Gadavist, Bayer) — macrocyclic non-ionic
• Gadoterate / gadoteric acid (Dotarem, Guerbet; Clariscan, GE) — macrocyclic ionic
• Gadoteridol (ProHance, Bracco) — macrocyclic non-ionic
• Gadopiclenol* (Elucirem, Guerbet; Vueway, Bracco) — macrocyclic non-ionic
• Gadoxetate disodium (Eovist, Bayer) — linear ionic, hepatobiliary

Group III — limited data: "No agents currently in this category (as of April 2024)." Group III is empty.

*The gadopiclenol footnote: kinetic stability and dissociation half-life comparable to other Group II macrocyclics; NSF risk at standard-or-lower dose considered theoretically sufficiently low or possibly non-existent, hence Group II* provisional status. Long-term in vivo human data in eGFR < 30 is less established — "It is at the discretion of local practices whether to treat this as a group II or group III agent."

The trap worth teaching: Group ≠ chemical class. MultiHance and Eovist are linear ionic agents sitting in Group II. "Macrocyclic = Group II" and "linear = Group I" are both wrong.

18.2 eGFR thresholds and NSF policy

• At-risk definition for Group I/III agents: on dialysis (any form) OR severe/end-stage CKD (CKD 4 or 5, eGFR < 30 mL/min/1.73 m²) without dialysis OR AKI.
• CKD 4/5 (eGFR < 30), not on dialysis: Group I contraindicated; use Group II.
• ESRD on chronic dialysis: Group I contraindicated; use Group II. Schedule elective GBCA-MRI as closely before a scheduled hemodialysis as possible. Dialysis should not be initiated or altered solely for GBCA clearance. Consider CT with iodinated contrast in anuric patients where diagnostic yield is similar.
• CKD 3 (eGFR 30–59): NSF "exceedingly rare." No special precautions necessary.
• CKD 1–2 (eGFR 60–119): any GBCA can be administered safely.
• Screening method: "Simply asking patients if they have a problem with their kidneys is not considered an effective screening tool" — it fails to detect most CKD, even eGFR < 30. Use a risk-factor questionnaire: history of renal disease (dialysis, transplant, single kidney, kidney surgery, kidney cancer, CKD or prior AKI), plus optionally diabetes. For patients on dialysis or with known AKI, eGFR is not useful or necessary — they are at-risk regardless.
• Equations: MDRD (4-variable) or CKD-EPI for adults; updated Schwartz equation for children.
• ACR deliberately differs from FDA labeling — a standing footnote notes FDA applies identical renal-assessment recommendations to every GBCA, while ACR judges the evidence to permit "less stringent yet safe patient management."
• Pediatric caveat: eGFR may be < 30 in premature infants and neonates purely from immature renal function; use Group II agents in this setting if feasible.

18.3 Gadolinium retention

• Preferential deposition in the dentate nucleus and globus pallidus, even with an intact blood-brain barrier and no clinical disease.
• May be dose dependent; occurs in patients with no kidney or liver disease.
• No reports to date of histologic changes suggesting neurotoxicity. No known adverse clinical consequences.
• The identity and dose of GBCA used should be recorded after each intravenous administration.
• Agent-selection factors: diagnostic efficacy, relaxivity, adverse-reaction rate, dosing/concentration, and propensity to deposit.

FDA actions: July 2015 Safety Alert announcing investigation of brain deposits. 19 December 2017 (updated 16 May 2018) Drug Safety Communication requiring a new class warning across all GBCAs, a new patient Medication Guide offered before every administration, and manufacturer retention studies. FDA concluded benefit continues to outweigh risk; the only known adverse health effect of retention remains NSF in patients with pre-existing renal failure. [S21]

ACR–ASNR Position Statement on the Use of Gadolinium Contrast Agents — language reproduced nearly verbatim in the Contrast Manual's retention section. Companion research agenda: McDonald RJ et al., "Gadolinium Retention: A Research Roadmap from the 2018 NIH/ACR/RSNA Workshop on Gadolinium Chelates," Radiology 2018;289(2):517–534. [S22]

18.4 Where ARRT actually tests this

Recall from §14.2 that the blueprint names linear versus macrocyclic and eGFR/BUN/creatinine — it does not name NSF or gadolinium deposition as line items. The exam tests the classification and the screening lab values, not the NSF literature. Study accordingly.

19. Exposure limits — the numbers

19.1 Operating modes (IEC 60601-2-33)

1. Normal Operating Mode — no output causes physiologic stress. Routine clinical.
2. First Level Controlled — one or more outputs may cause physiologic stress requiring medical supervision. Software must require specific operator acknowledgment to enter.
3. Second Level Controlled — significant risk; requires explicit ethical/IRB approval. Not used in routine clinical practice.

19.2 SAR

The head limit does not change between Normal and First Level Controlled — a frequently-missed detail. ACR characterizes 2 W/kg as "on par with heat production associated with light or brisk activity, i.e. walking."

Local SAR (IEC): 10 W/kg head and trunk/core; 20 W/kg extremities. [PARTIALLY VERIFIED — from secondary sources, not the paywalled IEC text. The ACR manual does not restate local SAR.]

Partial-body scaling (IEC): a = [10 − 8×R] W/kg, b = [10 − 6×R] W/kg, where R = ratio of RF-exposed mass to total patient mass. All values assume ambient ≤ 25 °C; above that the First Level whole-body 4 W/kg limit derates by 0.25 W/kg per 1 °C rise.

Specific Absorption / Specific Energy Dose: IEC proposes a warning at 120 W-minutes/kg — equivalent to 1 hour at 2 W/kg or 30 minutes at 4 W/kg.

Averaging window — a correction. An earlier version of this document stated 6-minute averaging. FDA primary text specifies whole body averaged over 15 minutes and head averaged over 10 minutes. The commonly cited "6 minutes" is an IEC convention and against IEC primary text. Do not print it as IEC-sourced without verification.

The caveat ACR stresses: operating mode sets the whole-body limit and does not prevent focal burns from bad positioning or a stray conductor.

19.3 Static field — FDA significant-risk thresholds

[S23]

19.4 dB/dt and peripheral nerve stimulation

• ACR/IEC operational rule: Normal Operating Mode — the gradient system shall not exceed 80% of the mean PNS threshold (threshold = onset of sensation). First Level Controlled — shall not exceed 100% of the directly determined mean PNS threshold.
• FDA's criterion is qualitative, not numeric: "Any time rate of change of gradient fields (dB/dt) sufficient to produce severe discomfort or painful nerve stimulation."
• IEC strength-duration model: [dB/dt]_TH = rheobase × (1 + 0.36/t_samp), with rheobase 20 T/s and chronaxie 0.36 ms (360 µs), t_samp in ms. Rheobase equivalently ≈ 2.2 V/m. [PARTIALLY VERIFIED — equation and constants from peer-reviewed PNS literature, not the IEC document.]
• Highest dB/dt is not at isocenter. With the brain at isocenter, peak dB/dt is over the chest — "right where a cardiac pacemaker might be positioned."

19.5 Acoustic noise

• FDA significant risk: peak unweighted SPL > 140 dB; A-weighted RMS SPL > 99 dBA with hearing protection in place.
• IEC 60601-2-33:2022: for equipment capable of exceeding 99 dBA A-weighted RMS, hearing protection must reduce SPL below that threshold.
• ACR practical guidance: protection "frequently needs to be in excess of 28 to 30 dB." Ear plugs and ear muffs recommended whenever possible. Muffs may be displaced mid-exam. Sequences not FDA-cleared must never be run without hearing protection.
• Sites need a documented process for patients who refuse hearing protection, "and may consider canceling the examination."

20. Devices, implants, and special populations

20.1 ASTM F2503

Current: ASTM F2503-23e1 (2023, e1 editorial revision), Standard Practice for Marking Medical Devices and Other Items for Safety in the Magnetic Resonance Environment. [S24]

MR Conditional is not a permission slip. It is a pointer to a condition set, every element of which must be independently verified against the specific device model and the specific scanner.

FDA companion guidance: Testing and Labeling Medical Devices for Safety in the Magnetic Resonance (MR) Environment. [S25]

20.2 Implants

• CIEDs — MR Conditional pacemakers (IPG + leads) available in the US since 2011; ICDs, CRT devices, ILRs and ICMs since. For devices not labeled MR Conditional, ACR defers to the Heart Rhythm Society consensus. Required elements: institutional SOP with a joint MRMD + CIED physician approach; documented medical necessity; evaluation for fractured or abandoned leads (chest radiograph may be needed); ECG and pulse oximetry monitoring throughout; defibrillator/monitor with external pacing available outside Zone IV; ACLS personnel in attendance until the CIED is reprogrammed post-exam; interrogation and programming immediately pre- and post-MRI.
• Epicardial pacing wires — type, labeling, and location must be distinguished; temporary post-surgical leads are frequently cut with remnants retained.
• Cochlear implants, aneurysm clips, medication pumps, neurostimulators — require positive identification before Zone III/IV entry. A patient death is on record from implantable pain-pump malfunction after static-field exposure.
• Tattoos and cosmetics — extensive, dark, or loop-shaped tattoos and tattooed eyeliner increase RF heating potential. Tattoos placed within 48 hours carry a theoretical smearing concern, though "reports of smearing or smudging of tattoos or eyeliner are lacking." ACR's blunt teaching point: "Tattoos can heat."
• RF exposure caveat: "the region undergoing direct electromagnetic RF irradiation is often larger than the anatomic area of interest" — a device outside the FOV may still be irradiated, particularly with the body transmit coil.

20.3 Special populations

• Pregnant patients — ACR supports MRI when all three hold: (1) up to 3 T in Normal Operating Mode (whole-body SAR 2 W/kg); (2) expected benefit to patient and/or fetus; (3) no other practical way to obtain the information. Risks above 3 T are unknown. Evidence base: pregnant-pig studies at 3 T, Normal Mode, max 30 min scan time, showing no substantial fetal or amniotic heating.
• GBCA in pregnancy — should not be routinely administered; case-by-case, decided by the responsible Level 2 MR Physician, with documented risk/benefit and consent.
• Pregnant staff — permitted to work in and around the MR environment throughout all stages of pregnancy. No restriction of activities in Zone III. Zone IV presence permissible when no active scanning is occurring; prudent to be out of Zone IV during scanning. No human pregnancy exposure data at ≥ 7 T.
• Pediatrics and neonates — special attention to body temperature; risk of temperature drop rises with younger age and lower weight. First Level Controlled Mode may be inappropriate for sedated, anesthetized, unconscious, or infant patients who cannot report or react to heating.
• Claustrophobia, large body habitus, and detainees/prisoners each require tailored institutional policy.

20.4 Shellock resources — status corrected

MRIsafety.com (Frank G. Shellock, PhD) remains the live implant and device database, with MagneticResonanceSafetyTesting.com as the associated testing service.

Current textbook: MRI Bioeffects, Safety, and Patient Management, 2nd Edition (2022), Shellock FG & Crues JV III (eds), Biomedical Research Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-9891632-8-6. $179 hardbound / $149 PDF. Fifty-plus international contributors. [Page count: publisher says 1,010; Open Library says 1,100 — sources disagree.]

The Reference Manual for Magnetic Resonance Safety, Implants, and Devices appears discontinued. Two independent research passes could confirm no edition newer than 2020 (ISBN 9780989163279). mrisafetybook.com currently advertises only the MRI Bioeffects 2nd Edition and does not list the Reference Manual at all. The "nineteen editions" marketing claim could not be reconciled with any locatable 2024–2026 printing.

Practical guidance: do not buy the 2020 print manual for current device screening. Use MRIsafety.com plus the free dated Shellock guideline PDFs hosted by ISMRT at ismrm.org/smrt/safety_page/ — these carry 2024 and 2025 revisions and cover embolization coils, coronary stents, passive orthopedic implants, heart valves, and post-operative patients. [S26, S27]

21. Adverse events and accreditation

21.1 The MAUDE data

Delfino JG, Krainak DM, Flesher SA, Miller DL. "MRI-related FDA adverse event reports: A 10-yr review." Medical Physics 2019;46(12):5562–5571. doi:10.1002/mp.13768 [S28]

1 January 2008 – 31 December 2017: 1,568 reports received for MR systems; 1,548 analyzed.

MR coils were frequently cited as the likely cause of burns. 97 injuries (10%) occurred when large patients contacted the sides of the bore while positioned off-center for shoulder and breast examinations — a directly actionable finding for daily practice. Deaths included one from implantable pain-pump malfunction after static-field exposure; a field service engineer was crushed by a blower panel that became a projectile.

An earlier independent 10-year MAUDE analysis found 389 MRI-related reports including 9 deaths — 3 pacemaker failure, 2 insulin pump failure, 4 from implant disturbance, a projectile, and asphyxiation from a cryogenic mishap. Over 70% of the 389 were burns; 10% projectile-related.

21.2 The Joint Commission

Sentinel Event Alert Issue 38, "Preventing accidents and injuries in the MRI suite," published 14 February 2008. Underlying data: 5 MRI cases in the TJC Sentinel Event database resulting in 4 deaths — 1 projectile, 3 cardiac events.

Status: RETIRED. TJC periodically retires alerts whose content is superseded; SEA 38 is no longer posted on jointcommission.org. Its content was absorbed into TJC's diagnostic imaging accreditation standards and, more recently, National Performance Goal #13, "Protecting Patients and Providers in Imaging."

Study guides should still teach "Sentinel Event Alert #38 (2008)" as the named MRI alert — it remains the canonical exam answer — while noting it is retired. [S29, S30]

21.3 ACR MRI Accreditation Program

Phantom construction: hollow acrylic cylinder filled with 10 mM NiCl₂ / 75 mM NaCl solution.

Acquisition: sagittal localizer + four axial series, 11 slice locations per axial series, 5 mm thickness / 5 mm gap = 100 mm span.

The seven tests:

[CAVEAT — the numeric table above is sourced from a diagnostic-medical-physics secondary summary, because the ACR accreditation-support pages render criteria in linked sub-articles that did not extract. The ACR MRI Quality Control Manual is authoritative and should be consulted before these numbers are printed as fact.]

Clinical images: 4–6 examinations per unit depending on modules; at least one specialty exam per module. Modules cover Head/Neck, Spine, MSK, Body, MRA, Cardiac, and Breast.

Technologist qualifications — initial eligibility by any one of:

• ARRT, ARMRIT, or CAMRT registered as an MR technologist; or
• ARRT-registered or unlimited state license plus 6 months supervised MRI clinical scanning experience; or
• An associate or bachelor degree in an allied health field plus certification in another clinical imaging field (ARDMS, NMTCB) plus 6 months supervised experience; or
• Performing MRI continuously since October 1996 with documented competence.

Note that ACR explicitly accepts ARMRIT alongside ARRT — a meaningful data point in the credential debate (§29.3).

Continuing education: in compliance with the certifying organization's requirements. ACR additionally recommends annual MRI safety training for all MR-environment personnel.

[S31–S35]

21.4 IAC

IAC Standards and Guidelines for MRI Accreditation, published 1 April 2025. Technologist-relevant changes:

• The first standards to require that a registered technologist always remain with the patient
• New standards for portable and remote MRI, addressing MRI/CT technologist staffing shortages and third-party remote scanning
• An AI guidance statement published 1 April 2025 as an addendum to each standards set

[S36]

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22. Reading this section

Every edition, price, and ISBN below was verified against a publisher or vendor page unless marked. No ISBN in this document was reconstructed from memory.

A structural finding worth stating up front: the English-language MRI technologist canon has aged badly. MRI in Practice is from 2018, MRI at a Glance from 2015, Bushong's MRI volume from 2014, the Elmaoğlu handbook from 2011. The genuinely current items are the ARRT 2025 specifications, the ACR 2024/2026 safety manual, Breedlove's 2025 Sectional Anatomy, the 2023 LANGE Review, and a 2026 Spanish Elsevier text. A candidate relying only on the classic texts will be studying pre-2019 safety and contrast guidance.

23. Books

23.1 Physics and principles

MRI in Practice, 5th Edition — Westbrook C, Talbot J. Wiley-Blackwell, October 2018. ISBN 9781119391968 (pbk) / 9781119392002. 416 pp. $55.00 Wiley eBook / $68.95 print.

The default text for ARRT MRI preparation and the title most consistently named first by program directors. Covers basic principles, image weighting and contrast, spin- and gradient-echo sequences, spatial encoding, k-space, protocol optimization, artifacts, instrumentation, and safety. The 5th edition deepened the physics relative to the 4th and added worked equations, scan tips, and dedicated chapters on equipment, vascular imaging, and safety. Maps directly onto Image Production — 106 of 200 scored questions.

Verification note: four separate targeted searches for a 6th edition or a 2025/2026 Wiley release returned nothing. Wiley's own product pages list the 5th as current. Treat the 5th edition (2018) as current until Wiley says otherwise.

Caveat: at eight years old it predates the February 2025 ARRT specifications, the 2024/2026 ACR safety manual, and the 2025/2026 contrast guidance. Best physics foundation available and simultaneously out of date on safety. Pair it with Part VII.

MRI at a Glance, 3rd Edition — Westbrook C. Wiley-Blackwell, December 2015. ISBN 9781119053552. 136 pp. ~$40.09. Full-color double-page-spread format, 55 key points, tables, scan tips, appendices on image optimization and parameter selection, plus a companion site with animations and interactive MCQs. Wiley explicitly positions it for ARRT MRI candidates. Rapid-review and final-week refresher, not a spine text. Oldest core title here; no 4th edition listed.

MRI Physics: Tech to Tech Explanations — Powers SJ. Wiley-Blackwell, June 2021. ISBN 9781119615026. 416 pp. Written by a working MR technologist and former GE clinical applications specialist explicitly for technologists. Covers static-field and RF safety, pulse sequences, artifacts, gradients, and the "MRI math" registry candidates most often stumble on. Its value is translating what Westbrook states formally into the register a scanning tech actually thinks in. The most frequently suggested bridge for the physics-averse.

MRI: The Basics, 4th Edition — Hashemi RH, Lisanti CJ, Bradley WG Jr. Wolters Kluwer/LWW, November 2017. ISBN 9781496384324 (print) / 9781496384355 (eBook). 496 pp. $104.99 print / $74.99 eBook. Physician-oriented but crossed over to technologist use for its patient, illustration-heavy exposition. The 4th added chapters on general MR safety, contrast safety, and motion correction, plus SWI, restriction spectrum imaging, MR elastography, and relaxometry, and a chapter of 100 board-style questions. Pitched a notch above registry level.

MRI from Picture to Proton, 3rd Edition — McRobbie DW, Moore EA, Graves MJ, Prince MR. Cambridge University Press, 23 August 2017. ISBN 9781107643239 (pbk); eText 9781316689257 / 9781316687505. 400 pp. Works backwards from the clinical image to the underlying physics. Widely used in UK and Commonwealth programs and by physicists as a bridge text. Broader and more rigorous than Westbrook, organized around understanding rather than any registry blueprint.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Physical Principles and Sequence Design, 2nd Edition — Brown RW, Cheng Y-CN, Haacke EM, Thompson MR, Venkatesan R. Wiley-Blackwell, 23 June 2014. ISBN 9780471720850 (hbk) / 9781118633977 (eText). 976 pp. The reference-grade graduate text, universally shorthanded as "Haacke." This is not a registry preparation book and buying it for that purpose is a common and expensive mistake. Calculus- and vector-heavy. Include only for physicist-level understanding, graduate coursework, or research.

The Physics of Clinical MR Taught Through Images, 4th Edition — Runge VM, Nitz WR, et al. Thieme, 2018. ISBN 9781626234277 (print) / 9781626234284 (eBook). 336 pp. Teaches physics entirely through annotated clinical images — 700+ images, drawings, tables, magnetization curves, pulse-sequence timing diagrams. Suits visual learners already scanning daily.

Duke Review of MRI Physics: Case Review Series, 2nd Edition — Mangrum W, Hoang QB, Amrhein TJ, et al. Elsevier, 18 May 2018. ISBN 9780323530385. 264 pp. Organizes physics around 18 core principles, each taught through clinically relevant cases with board-style self-assessment. Note the title change: the 1st edition (2012, ISBN 9781455700844) was Duke Review of MRI Principles and is superseded.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Physical and Biological Principles, 4th Edition — Bushong SC, Clarke G. Mosby/Elsevier, 2014. ISBN 9780323073547. 528 pp. Deliberately written to require no heavy math, with challenge questions and MRI practice examinations mirroring the ARRT category structure. Historically a common program adoption. Flag: 2014, no 5th edition found, Elsevier's shop page resolves inconsistently. Treat as aging and possibly out of print; do not rely on it for current safety or contrast content.

23.2 Safety

ACR Manual on MR Safety — 2024 edition, updated March 2026. American College of Radiology. 152 pp. Free. See §17. The single most important safety document in the field, and it costs nothing.

MRI Bioeffects, Safety, and Patient Management, 2nd Edition — Shellock FG, Crues JV III (eds). Biomedical Research Publishing Group, 2022. ISBN 9780989163286. ~1,010 pp. $179 hardbound / $149 PDF. Fifty-plus international contributors across bioeffects, implants and devices, contrast agents, patient management, and facility safety. A reference work, not a study guide. Buy it for MRSO/MRSE responsibilities or authoritative citation; for the registry, the free ACR manual plus a good review book covers the tested material.

Reference Manual for Magnetic Resonance Safety, Implants, and Devices — 2020 Edition — Shellock FG. ISBN 9780989163279. Effectively superseded in format — see §20.4.

ISMRT/SMRT safety education resources — free technologist-authored curriculum from the International Society for MR Radiographers & Technologists. Includes a commissioned six-video safety series approved for Category A credit satisfying Level 2 MR safety education, text-based home studies with CE certificates, the free dated Shellock implant guideline PDFs, and position articles on 7 T safety, CIEDs, and gadolinium deposition. The most current free safety material available.

23.3 Cross-sectional anatomy

Sectional Anatomy for Imaging Professionals, 5th Edition — Breedlove M. Elsevier/Mosby, December 2025. ISBN 9780323827881. 720 pp, ~1,600 illustrations.

The most current major title in this catalog and the standard cross-sectional anatomy text for imaging technologists. The 5th adds contiguous multi-plane image series for brain, abdomen, and cranial/facial bones, and integrates sonography images into the spine, thorax, abdomen, and pelvis chapters.

⚠️ Authorship change worth flagging: editions 1–4 were by Lorrie L. Kelley and Connie Petersen; the 5th is authored by Monica Breedlove (Boise State University CT/MRI Program Director). Metadata aggregators still incorrectly list Kelley on the 5th edition ISBN. Order by ISBN, not author name. A companion workbook exists (ISBN 9780323827928).

Netter Atlas of Human Anatomy, 8th Edition — Netter FH. Elsevier, 2022. ISBN 9780323680424. 712 pp. General anatomy foundation, not MRI-specific. Netter's plates are regional and idealized rather than sectional, so for Procedures it complements but does not replace a sectional atlas. Most useful where underlying gross anatomy is shaky.

Grant's Atlas of Anatomy — Wolters Kluwer/LWW. [Edition, year, ISBN, price all UNVERIFIED — do not cite an edition number without checking shop.lww.com.]

23.4 Procedures, protocols, pathology

Handbook of MRI Technique, 5th Edition — Westbrook C. Wiley-Blackwell, 2022 (Open Library records 2021). ISBN 9781119759331. [336 or 416 pp — sources disagree. Price UNVERIFIED.]

The practical counterpart to MRI in Practice: where that book explains why, this tells you how to run the exam. Organized anatomically — positioning, coil selection, slice prescription, sequence selection, image-optimization decisions region by region. The 5th updated techniques throughout and added a pediatric chapter. This is the title that maps to the Procedures domain (57 scored questions). Supersedes the older Handbook of MRI Scanning.

MRI Handbook: MR Physics, Patient Positioning, and Protocols — Elmaoğlu M, Çelik A. Springer, December 2011. ISBN 9781461410959. 318 pp. Compact positioning and protocol reference organized by anatomic region. Flag: fifteen years old with no newer edition — protocols and sequence naming have moved on substantially.

Fundamentals of Body MRI, 3rd Edition — Roth CG, Naringrekar H, Deshmukh S. Elsevier, 31 October 2024. ISBN 9780323833813 (print) / 9780323833837 (eBook). 568 pp. Body MRI by organ system, combining protocol guidance with imaging findings and differential diagnosis. Recently updated. Written for radiologists and interpretive rather than technique-focused — above registry scope, useful for technologists working heavily in abdominal MRI.

CT & MRI Pathology: A Pocket Atlas, 3rd Edition — Grey ML, Ailinani JM. McGraw Hill, 2018. ISBN 9781260121940 (print) / 9781260121957 (eText). 512 pp. CT and MRI appearances of ~200 commonly encountered pathologies with concise clinical context. Aimed at technologists and students. Useful for the pathology-recognition strand running through Procedures, and genuinely handy as a bench reference.

23.5 Patient care

Torres' Patient Care in Imaging Technology, 10th Edition — Ryan T, Dutton A. Wolters Kluwer/LWW, 2023. ISBN 9781975192518 (print) / 9781975221393 (eText) / 9781975221904 (print + digital). 380 pp. Explicitly aligned to current ARRT and ASRT standards — exactly what the 16-question Patient Care domain requires. The 10th adds a Medical Ethics and the Law chapter and uses real case studies.

Patient Care in Radiography, 10th Edition — Ehrlich RA, Coakes DM. Mosby/Elsevier, 2 March 2020. ISBN 9780323654401. 512 pp. The main alternative, with step-by-step procedural instruction and 400+ full-color illustrations. Slightly older than the current Torres, which matters in a domain where ARRT explicitly tests policy and ethics currency.

Either adequately covers 16 questions. Pick whichever your program adopted — do not buy both, and note that 16 questions does not justify a $150 textbook if you already own one.

23.6 Registry review and question banks

⚠️ There are two distinct LANGE MRI titles, frequently confused.

LANGE Review: MRI Clinical Concepts and Imaging Applications Manual with Registry Review, 1st Edition — Rich WZA, Grey ML. McGraw Hill, 2023. ISBN 9781264632794 (print) / 9781264634149 (eText). 384 pp.

Three parts: patient preparation, clinical application of performing the MRI procedure, and review questions — 200+ multiple-choice questions. The hybrid design works as both concepts manual and review book. The most recently published registry-focused MRI title verified, and its 2023 date is a real advantage over the 2018 Westbrook — though it still predates the February 2025 specification changes.

Lange Q&A MRI Examination — Southers B, Roman T, Hood M, Posh J, et al. McGraw Hill. ISBN 9780071843690. 304 pp. $69.00 (print and eBook). [Year UNVERIFIED — McGraw Hill's page renders 2025, Open Library records 2020, the ISBN block indicates 2015; likely a 2015 first edition with later reissues.]

The largest verified question bank in print — 800+ exam-style questions written to the ARRT blueprint, with explanations for both correct and incorrect options. Its four sections mirror the ARRT domains exactly: Patient Care, Imaging Procedures, Data Acquisition and Processing, and Physical Principles of Image Formation. A drill book, not a teaching text — it assumes you have learned the material elsewhere. Many candidates use both LANGE titles.

MRI Registry Review: Tech to Tech Questions and Answers — Powers SJ. Wiley-Blackwell, 2021. ISBN 9781119757931. 400 pp. $49.00 eBook / $60.95 print. Organized into four sections matching ARRT content specifications. Notably targets both the initial registry exam and the CQR Structured Self-Assessment — few competitors address CQR at all. Includes study tips and expanded explanations rather than bare answer keys. Pairs naturally with the same author's MRI Physics: Tech to Tech as a learn-then-drill set.

Mosby's Exam Review for Magnetic Resonance Imaging — DeMaio DN, Phelps J, Little J. Elsevier/Mosby. ISBN 9780323789950 (current record); 9780323286688 / 9780323286725 (earlier records). ⚠️ [YEAR AND AVAILABILITY UNVERIFIED — verify a shipping copy exists before ordering.]

The announced table of contents is ideal for registry prep, but: Elsevier's shop page for 9780323286688 returns 404; the inspection-copy page for 9780323789950 reports the title is not available; and at least one catalog record carries a placeholder publication date of 1 July 2050 — a standard publisher marker for an indefinitely deferred title. Assessment: this book has been repeatedly delayed and may never have been published. The CT sibling (Mosby's Exam Review for Computed Tomography, 3rd ed., ISBN 9780323871365) is genuinely available, which is likely the source of the confusion. Do not build a study plan around the MRI volume.

23.7 Official and international

ARRT MRI Reference Documents (2025 set) — all free PDFs at arrt.org: Examination Content Specifications, Didactic and Clinical Competency Requirements, SSA Content Specifications, Task Inventory, Clinical Experience Requirements, Structured Education Requirements, Practice Analysis Report, Standard Setting Report (2020), and both Eligibility Pathway Handbooks.

ASRT publishes no traditional recommended-reading list — it sells its own courseware (§25.1) plus the ASRT Magnetic Resonance Curriculum (entry-level educational guidelines) and Scope of Practice / Practice Standards documents, which are what accredited programs build against.

ARMRIT publishes its own "MRI Technologist Quick Reference and Study Guide" — $50.00, non-refundable, not required, sold directly. [ISBN, year, page count UNVERIFIED.] Third-party guidance consistently names Westbrook's MRI in Practice as the primary recommended text for ARMRIT candidates too — the two exams draw on substantially the same body of knowledge, so this book list transfers.

Resonancia magnética dirigida a técnicos superiores en imagen para el diagnóstico, 3ª edición — Costa Subías J, Soria Jerez JA. Elsevier España, 2026. ISBN 9788413828831. 358 pp. €28.40 print / €22.72 eBook. (Previous edition: 9788491136460.)

The best-verified Spanish-language equivalent and the most recently published book in this entire catalog. Developed with support from AETR. Three parts mapping closely onto the ARRT structure: physical principles and instrumentation, patient management, and sectional anatomy with imaging procedures. Self-assessment questions per chapter, clinical cases with answers, and a specialty glossary. Written to the Spanish TSID qualification rather than the ARRT blueprint — a comprehension aid for Spanish-dominant candidates, not a registry substitute. At €28, remarkable value and far more current than the English core texts.

24. Online question banks

24.1 The best single purchase — MRIQuiz.com

$99 one-time. mriquiz.com

• 2,200+ practice questions; 2 fully timed mock exams; parameters simulator
• 24 chapters, 3+ hrs video, 19 hrs audio
• 17 Category A CE credits, ARRT Structured Education compliant
• Covers ARRT, ARMRIT, and CAMRT
• Mobile-web (not a native app)
• "Echo" AI assistant — 24/7 AI Q&A, the clearest AI feature in this space
• Pass guarantee: full $99 refund if you fail. Conditions: must reach ≥85% on the Registry Readiness Meter, email results within 45 days, one-time reimbursement, account deactivated on refund. Claims 97.84% first-time success.

Assessment: the best value/feature ratio in the category, and the only product combining a real question bank, SEU-eligible CE, and a guarantee. Weaknesses: dated website; the 85% gate means the guarantee is not automatic.

24.2 Best combined prep + SEUs — Clover Learning MRI Cross-Trainer

From $55/month, auto-recurring, cancel anytime. cloverlearning.com

• 16 hours of ASRT-approved Structured Education — sized exactly to the ARRT post-primary requirement
• Full-length mock exams aligned to ARRT specs; Qbank; quizzes
• 430+ interactive cross-sectional anatomy/pathology images — a genuine differentiator
• Animated, byte-sized video lessons (best production quality in the category)
• 10-day money-back guarantee (not a pass guarantee)
• CE certificates remain accessible after subscription expires

[SEMI-VERIFIED pricing — the dedicated pricing URL returned 404 on direct fetch both times it was attempted; $55/mo comes from a search snippet of that page. Confirm at checkout.]

Assessment: the only product that credibly does both jobs — earn the 16 SEUs and prep the exam — in one purchase. Best for visual learners. Weakness: subscription cost scales with slow study (3 months ≈ $165).

24.3 Grab immediately, free — Medical Professionals MRI Registry Exam Prep

$0 through 31 December 2026, then $89.99. medical-professionals.com

• 1,000+ interactive flashcard questions
• 200-question full mock exam with timer, unlimited attempts
• Customizable practice tests; 122-day access from enrollment
• No CE/SEU on the prep course itself; no guarantee; no app

A 1,000-question bank plus a timed full-length mock for zero dollars, with a four-month clock on it. Take it regardless of what else you buy.

24.4 Corrections — three resources previously recommended in error

⚠️ Corectec has no MRI product. An earlier version of this document named Corectec "the cheapest serious option identified" for MRI preparation. That was wrong. Corectec (corectecreview.com) is radiography-only — 15 lessons, 15 exercises, 15 quizzes, 4 full-length simulated exams, built to the 2026 ARRT Radiography content specifications. The $80.00 / 6-month price is real but irrelevant to MRI candidates. (Their TLS certificate chain is also misconfigured; direct fetch fails.)

⚠️ RadTechBootCamp is discontinued. Clover Learning retired the bootcamp product line (RadTechBootCamp, CTtechBootCamp) in favor of the current plan structure. Legacy links still circulate. It was radiography, not MRI, even when live.

⚠️ Medality (formerly MRI Online) is for radiologists, not technologists. mrionline.com now 301-redirects to medality.com. Medality serves physicians exclusively — subspecialty case-based training, AMA PRA Category 1 CME, ABR MOC prep. Pricing runs $150/mo or $1,200/yr (Standard) to $4,249/yr (Ultimate Learning Pass). Zero MRI-technologist registry content. The name similarity is a genuine trap — this is a four-figure physician product.

Also not recommended: BoardVitals (ARRT Radiography only at $59; no MRI bank exists); Examzify and ExamEdge (auto-generated SEO quiz farms).

24.5 Other question banks

MRI All-In-One — mriallinone.com. $134.99 standard / $149.99 expedited. 2,700+ questions — the largest MRI-specific bank found. E-book study guide plus members area, 1 year access. Three mock exams. ~250 free sample questions plus a free demo study guide PDF at /free_mri_review_questions. No CE credits, no SEUs. Active YouTube channel with free full mock-exam videos. Weaknesses: highest price among pure banks, no CE value, and a "processing time up to 72 hours" delivery model for a digital product.

arrtmriexam.com — $19.95 (48-hr) / $49.95 (7-day) / $129.95 (6-week). 1,000+ questions domain-weighted to the actual blueprint (Patient Care 8%, Safety 10.5%, Image Production 53%, Procedures 28.5%). Full-length timed simulations; readiness analytics. 10 free sample questions, no signup, no card. No CE, no guarantee — and notably states "No honest practice platform can guarantee a pass." Sharpest blueprint alignment observed, and the tiered access is genuinely useful if your exam is next week. Punishing if you slip your test date.

Prepry — prepry.com. 8,100+ questions across ARRT (Radiography, CT, MRI, Mammography) and ARDMS. Free Question of the Day, no signup; free trial, no card. Native iOS and Android apps confirmed. [Subscription pricing UNVERIFIED — nothing published, effectively behind a signup wall. MRI-specific question count not disclosed.]

OpenExamPrep — open-exam-prep.com/practice/arrt-mri. Advertises 206+ free ARRT MRI questions, no signup, aligned to 2026 specifications. Direct fetch returned HTTP 429; claims from search results only. Free, so low risk.

RITE Advantage (riteadvantage.com), MRITutor (mritutor.com) — both frequently recommended.

25. Continuing education and SEU providers

The post-primary pathway requires 16 hours of structured education. These providers supply it; most are not exam prep.

25.1 The providers

The ASRT membership math: $135 membership + $240 member price = $375, versus $320 nonmember for MR Basics alone. Membership pays for itself only if you also use the 17 included CE credits — which most people should, since they cover most of a biennium.

The cheapest legitimate route to 16 SEUs is $39.99 (Medical Professionals MRI CE Package, 76+ credits).

25.2 The approver hierarchy

Courses are approved Category A or A+ by ASRT or AHRA, the bodies ARRT designates as RCEEMs (Recognized Continuing Education Evaluation Mechanisms). "ARRT approved" is a misnomer — ARRT approves the approvers. When evaluating any vendor, ask: is this course Category A or A+ approved by ASRT or AHRA? A vendor that cannot answer cleanly may be selling credits that don't count.

25.3 Free CE toward the 16 hours

Siemens Healthineers, GE HealthCare, and Philips Learning Center run free webinars, some carrying ASRT Category A credit. CE4RT gives 1 free credit; MedPro 1–3; RadTechEdu 1. AuntMinnie hosts sponsored webinars. State and regional societies hold events.

This route is real but slow and unpredictable to accumulate. Budget $39.99–$54.95 to close the SEU gap reliably.

26. Free references, media, and apps

26.1 The free canon

mriquestions.com — "Questions and Answers in MRI." Allen D. Elster, MD (Chair Emeritus, Wake Forest). Completely free. Grew out of his 1994/2001 book; actively maintained with crowd-sourced peer review. Hundreds of original color illustrations, multimedia, video. Covers hardware, the NMR phenomenon, relaxation, pulse sequences, k-space, rapid imaging, contrast agents, cardiovascular and functional imaging, spectroscopy, AI applications, and safety. Includes self-test quizzes and forums.

The single best free resource in the field, and nothing paid beats it for physics. Elster describes it as his gift back to the MRI community.

mrimaster.com — interactive courses, case studies, quizzes; protocol and positioning focus; aimed squarely at technologists. Free mobile app.

Radiopaedia — free MRI physics article library at radiopaedia.org/articles/mri-physics. The paid Imaging Physics: MRI course packages Michael Nel's video series with review questions and a certificate. [Course pricing UNVERIFIED.]

IMAIOS e-Anatomy — $132.99/year. Cross-sectional anatomy atlas; web, iOS, Android. No CE credits. Relevant to the 28.5% Procedures domain — but ASRT's Cross-Sectional Anatomy series ($150 member) gives 10 CE credits for similar money.

⚠️ revisemri.com is dead. An earlier version of this document listed it as a live free resource. The domain is parked and listed for sale on GoDaddy (307 redirect). It appears in many old study lists; it is gone.

⚠️ SMRT has been renamed ISMRT — the International Society for MR Radiographers & Technologists, a section of ISMRM. URLs under /smrt/ still resolve. Calendar-year membership, invoiced in December for the following year. [Dues UNVERIFIED.] Valuable for the training-program directory and post-certification community; not a priority purchase for a first-time candidate.

26.2 Does ARRT publish practice materials? Verified: no.

Checked against the MRI credential page, the examination FAQ, and the content-specifications page.

ARRT publishes no practice exam and no sample question bank, and explicitly does not endorse any study materials. What ARRT gives you free: the Content Specifications, both Eligibility Pathway Handbooks, the Structured Education Requirements, and the Clinical Experience / Didactic Competency documents.

The Content Specifications PDF is the highest-value single document in this entire report, and it costs nothing. Every legitimate vendor is reverse-engineering it. Anyone advertising an "official ARRT practice test" is selling you something.

26.3 YouTube

Radiology Tutorials for understanding physics; MRI All-In-One for question-format drilling. The free mock-exam videos are a legitimate zero-cost timed-practice substitute.

26.4 Mobile apps

Android is badly underserved. The two strongest dedicated MRI registry apps are iOS-only. Android users should lean on mobile-web platforms (MRIQuiz, Clover, arrtmriexam are all mobile-responsive), plus MRI MASTER and Prepry.

26.5 Flashcards — an honest answer

There is no well-known, curated, MRI-registry-specific Anki deck. AnkiWeb and the community wikis were searched. What exists is either radiologist-oriented (FRCR Part 1 Physics; Mastering Radiology) or radiography-oriented (Lange Radiography Review Flashcards, 294 cards). Brainscape hosts a user-made "MRI Mock Registry" deck. Quizlet hosts many user-made MRI registry sets — free, unvetted, no way to verify against the 2025 specifications.

Build your own deck from the ARRT Content Specifications rather than hunting for a good pre-made one.

26.6 AI and adaptive tools, 2024–2026

Thinner than the marketing suggests. Verified: MRIQuiz "Echo" (24/7 AI Q&A — the only AI feature native to a dedicated MRI-registry product); arrtmriexam.com readiness analytics and domain-weighted adaptive practice (algorithmic, not LLM); Medical Professionals adaptive test generation; AnkiDecks.com AI flashcard generation from your own materials. No dedicated AI-native MRI registry tutor launched 2024–2026 was found. "AI-powered" claims on the SEO quiz farms are unsubstantiated.

26.7 Live and instructor-led

W. Faulkner & Associates — 4-Day Basic MRI / Registry Review (t2star.com). The most respected name in MRI technologist education. Companion "MRI Registry Prep" iBook, 180 Q&A, on Apple Books, discounted for attendees. [2026 pricing UNVERIFIED.]

MTMI — livestream and in-person registry review. [2026 pricing UNVERIFIED — 403.]

AIMS Education — ARMRIT registry exam review. Penn State — MRI post-primary programs.

26a. Getting the clinical hours — the real bottleneck

SEUs cost $40–$375 and take days. The 125 repetitions are the hard part, and ARRT publishes the rules but no guidance whatsoever on obtaining access. That gap is where post-primary candidates actually get stuck.

26a.1 The sequencing trap

The 24-month clock runs backward from your application submission date, not your exam date. SEUs and repetitions earned early in a slow-moving plan silently expire out the back.

Front-load clinical hours, back-load SEUs — or at minimum, don't let SEUs age past 20 months before applying. Conversely, apply only once both are locked, because they freeze at application and you then have a full 365 days to test. Applying too early is the more common error than applying too late.

26a.2 The four routes people actually use

1. Internal cross-training. Most common and most reliable: negotiate scheduled MR rotations with your current employer while staying on payroll in your home modality. Leverage is unusually high right now — MRI vacancy is 17.4% (§32a), so departments have direct financial motive to grow techs internally rather than pay travelers. Frame the ask as a staffing and retention solution, not a personal favor.
2. Structured programs bundling clinical placement. Pulse Radiology explicitly pairs ARRT-approved structured education with clinical MRI training at affiliate sites across 30+ states — a product that exists precisely because clinical access, not coursework, is the constraint. [Pricing UNVERIFIED.]
3. Per-diem or PRN at a second facility. Outpatient imaging centers more often have capacity than hospitals. Being employed, even PRN, resolves credentialing, liability, and HIPAA questions that pure shadowing does not.
4. Formal employer training agreements, often carrying a service commitment in exchange for paid training time.

26a.3 Pitfalls, ranked by damage

• The 3-repetition floor. Reps 1 and 2 of a procedure you then abandon are worth literally nothing. You need ≥3 of at least 21 distinct procedures. Chasing variety without depth is the classic failure mode.
• The 24-month rolling expiration. A multi-year part-time accumulation bleeds early entries out the back. ARRT's Candidate A pattern (21 procedures × 6 reps = 126) is the minimum-breadth strategy and the safest for narrow scanner access.
• One procedure per patient per day. A busy neuro day with combined head/neck MRA studies yields far fewer countable entries than the raw volume suggests.
• The 7-per-day cap. You cannot compress 125 reps into a two-week blitz — the floor is roughly 18 working days even at maximum throughput.
• PET/MR and MR-LINAC exclusion. Technologists at advanced centers can accumulate substantial ineligible volume without realizing it.
• Forgetting Safety and QC. These are separate deliverables with their own verification, and the four phantom-based QC items require scheduled access to QC time — not something picked up incidentally on clinical shifts. Schedule them deliberately.
• Verifier availability at submission. The verifier must still be reachable and willing when you submit. If your supervising technologist may leave mid-accumulation, get verification done in batches rather than saving it all for the end.

26a.4 The blocker that isn't

Two rules dissolve the most commonly assumed obstacle:

• Your verifier does not need to hold MR credentials. Any ARRT certified and registered technologist can verify — post-primary certification explicitly not required. Safety and QC may additionally be verified by a medical physicist.
• The verifier may act remotely and is attesting rather than certifying direct observation of every repetition.

The asymmetry is the useful part: the verifier may be remote; the candidate may not. Small sites with no credentialed MR technologist on staff are not blocked.

26a.5 What "independently demonstrate" actually covers

ARRT specifies a skill set broader than operating the console: evaluation of requisition, patient ID, history and allergy documentation, safety screening, patient education, room prep, Standard Precautions, contrast preparation and administration, discharge instructions; coil selection, positioning, protocol and parameter selection, data acquisition, display/networking/archiving, postprocessing, documentation; and evaluation skills — technical quality analysis, correct anatomic demonstration, recognition of relevant pathology, and exam completeness.

26b. Education programs

26b.1 Finding them

JRCERT Find a Program — jrcert.org/find-a-program/. Filters by name, accreditation status, program type, degree level, delivery method, and geography. Four searchable disciplines: Radiography, Radiation Therapy, Magnetic Resonance, Medical Dosimetry. Program effectiveness data appears at the bottom of each program's detail page.

26b.2 How many exist

JRCERT accredits 700+ programs across all four disciplines combined; MR is by far the smallest.

The best available proxy is primary-source and arguably more useful than the headline count: 52 programs had MRI candidates in the 2025 ARRT Annual Exam Report (§15.1a). That is the population of MRI programs actually producing exam candidates.

26b.3 JRCERT program effectiveness conventions

Accredited programs must publish three metrics:

• Credentialing examination pass rate — 5-year average. JRCERT's definition: "The number of student graduates who pass, on first attempt, the ARRT certification examination or an unrestricted state licensing examination compared with the number of graduates who take the examination within six months of graduation."
• Job placement rate — 5-year average.
• Program completion rate — annual, not a 5-year average.

On the widely-cited 75% benchmark: JRCERT's own program-effectiveness page does not state a numeric benchmark. The 75% five-year-average figure is consistently reproduced on accredited programs' own effectiveness pages but could not be confirmed in JRCERT's standards text. Note the coincidence that JRCERT's cited benchmark and the national MRI pass rate are both ~75%.

26b.4 Named programs

Cleveland Clinic — Primary MRI Program. 16 months / four semesters, full-time Monday–Friday 08:00–15:30. Awards a Certificate in Magnetic Resonance Imaging. JRCERT accredited, current three-year award. Prerequisites: minimum associate's degree, A&P I and II, Medical Terminology.

⚠️ Correction worth flagging: this is an entry-level primary program and does not accept working R.T.s as primary applicants. It surfaces in searches as an option for working technologists and it is not one. Full-time on-site attendance also rules it out for most employed candidates. [Tuition UNVERIFIED — published in separate PDFs; contact MRIProgram@ccf.org / 216.448.3110.]

Thomas Jefferson University — MRI concentration within the B.S. Medical Imaging & Radiation Sciences. JRCERT accredited. [Tuition UNVERIFIED.]

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine & Science — MRI Program (Minnesota). JRCERT accredited for three years. Mayo health-sciences programs are frequently tuition-free or stipend-supported, which if true here would make it a cost outlier —.

Penn State Schuylkill — MRI Post-Primary Certification, explicitly aimed at credentialed R.T.s. [Tuition UNVERIFIED.]

UPMC — MRI Certificate Program (Advanced Imaging Technologist Program), hospital-based, aimed at working technologists. [Tuition UNVERIFIED.]

University of Cincinnati — MRI Certificate. [Accreditation, format, tuition all UNVERIFIED.]

Pulse Radiology — Online MRI Program, 14 weeks, online didactic plus affiliate clinical placement in 30+ states. The strongest fit found for a working R.T. needing both SEUs and clinical access. [Tuition and JRCERT status UNVERIFIED.]

Honest assessment: published tuition is the weakest-covered item in this entire report. Programs overwhelmingly place cost behind PDFs, contact forms, or admissions conversations, and several sites actively block automated retrieval. Building a real budget requires phone calls.

26b.5 The structural point that can save five figures

A post-primary candidate does not need to enroll in a JRCERT-accredited MRI program at all. The pathway requires 16 SEUs + 125 documented repetitions + the exam. JRCERT accreditation governs primary pathway programs. Enrolling in a full program is a convenience-and-access purchase, not a regulatory requirement.

27. Building a study plan from the blueprint

Synthesis and reasoning from the verified data above, not a citation of published advice.

27.1 Allocate by weight, not by comfort

Two deliberate distortions: over-invest in Data Acquisition because it is the national weak point and conceptually foundational; under-invest in Safety because candidates already perform well there.

⚠️ The Safety recommendation reverses entirely for exams from 1 February 2028, when Safety nearly doubles to 40 questions and becomes separately gated (§16.1). This table is current-blueprint only.

27.2 Build the trade-off matrix

ARRT's own sidebar states that Sequence Parameters questions test interdependence. Construct a table with rows for each parameter (TR, TE, TI, NEX/NSA, flip angle, FOV, matrix, slice thickness, bandwidth, ETL) and columns for SNR, CNR, spatial resolution, and scan time. Fill in direction and, where applicable, the mathematical relationship:

• SNR ∝ √NEX
• SNR ∝ voxel volume
• Scan time = TR × phase-encoding steps × NEX ÷ ETL

Thirty-six questions — 18% of the exam — live in that one table.

27.3 Pace to one minute per item

230 items in 230 minutes. Run practice examinations under that constraint from early on, not only at the end. A candidate who answers correctly but slowly will fail.

27.4 Interpret practice scores against 66%, not 75

Scaled 75 corresponds to approximately 66% correct. A practice score of 70% is a pass-range score, not a marginal one — provided the bank is calibrated to ARRT difficulty. Candidates routinely panic at 72% because they are comparing against the wrong number.

27.5 Order of operations

1. Spatial localization and k-space first. Gradients, phase and frequency encoding, and k-space filling are the substrate for everything in Image Production. Learning pulse sequences before k-space is learning vocabulary before grammar.
2. Tissue characteristics and weighting (T1/T2/T2*/PD) — the why behind contrast.
3. Pulse sequences — combinations of the above.
4. The parameter trade-off matrix.
5. Artifacts — each is a failure mode of a mechanism already learned. Studying them earlier means memorizing pictures instead of understanding causes.
6. Procedures and anatomy in parallel throughout — they benefit more from spaced repetition than from a block.
7. Safety and Patient Care last — highest-scoring nationally, most tractable to late study, largely list-based. (Reverses for 2028.)

27.6 Cost scenarios

Lean but complete — ~$164

• Medical Professionals MRI Exam Prep — $0 (through 31 Dec 2026)
• MRIQuiz.com — $99 (2,200 Q, 2 timed mocks, 17 SEU-compliant CE, guarantee)
• Medical Professionals MRI CE Package — $39.99 (76+ credits, covers the 16 SEUs)
• MRI Pro iOS app — $24.99 (drop for Android → $139)
• Free: mriquestions.com, ARRT Content Specifications, Radiology Tutorials

Most common real-world stack — ~$475

• ASRT membership $135 + MR Basics $240 = $375 (16 SEUs, gold standard, plus 17 CE/yr)
• MRIQuiz $99 or Clover 2 months ($110)

Premium — $700–$1,100 — add Clover for 3 months (~$165), MRI All-In-One ($134.99), IMAIOS ($132.99), or a Faulkner/MTMI live course ($595+).

Non-negotiable on top of all of these: the ARRT application fee ($225, or $450 on the ARDMS/NMTCB supporting-category tier).

The $0 path is genuinely viable for content — ARRT Content Specifications + Medical Professionals free prep (1,000 Q + a timed 200-question mock) + mriquestions.com + OpenExamPrep (206 free Q) + MRI All-In-One's ~250 free samples + arrtmriexam's 10 free samples + YouTube mock-exam videos + free apps ≈ 1,500+ practice questions, at least one timed full-length mock, and complete physics coverage, for nothing.

What free cannot fully solve: the 16 structured education credits are a hard eligibility requirement. Vendor-webinar free CE is real but slow and unpredictable. The realistic floor is therefore ~$40, not $0.

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28. Maintaining the ARRT credential

28.1 Annual renewal

Due the last day of your birth month, with an ethics attestation each year. Fee: $65 flat annually as of 2026 — regardless of how many credentials you hold or whether a non-ARRT supporting credential was used. Multiple sources agree; not confirmed on ARRT's fee page, which covers application fees only.

28.2 Biennial continuing education

• 24 Category A or A+ credits per 24-month biennium for R.T.s
• Exceptions: Sonography holders must earn at least 16 sonography-specific credits within the 24; R.R.A.s 50 credits; Imaging Assistants 10 discipline-specific credits
• All 24 must be Category A or A+ — evaluated and approved by a RCEEM. ASRT is a RCEEM, so any ASRT-approved activity carries Category A or A+ credit.
• Two deadlines one month apart, a common failure point:
  • CE completion deadline: last day of the month before your birth month
  • CE reporting / renewal deadline: last day of your birth month
• The biennium begins the first day of your birth month; if certification falls fewer than 12 months before that, it starts one year later
• Credits cannot be carried forward between bienniums
• CE probation adds six months (30 total) still requiring 24 credits
• Credits from ARRT-approved organizations and CQR prescriptions transfer automatically into the platform
• Once renewal is submitted, no changes can be made
• One biennium change permitted, requested during the first year of the current biennium

28.3 Continuing Qualifications Requirements (CQR)

Applies to: all R.T.s who earned their credential on or after 1 January 2011, and all R.R.A.s regardless of date. Exempt: R.T.s credentialed before 1 January 2011, and all Imaging Assistants.

Every 10 years, with a three-year compliance window once ARRT opens it and notifies through the online account.

Three steps:

1. Professional Profile — document procedures performed and frequency; ARRT benchmarks against peers.
2. Structured Self-Assessment (SSA) — identifies knowledge and skill gaps. Delivered at a test center or online at home. ARRT is emphatic: "not a test — and you can't fail it."
3. Prescribed CE — assigned only where the SSA reveals gaps. These credits also count toward the biennial requirement, so CQR rarely creates duplicate work.

Opt-out route: you may skip the SSA entirely and accept the maximum CE prescription for your discipline — trading assessment time for a larger CE burden.

"In most cases, there is no cost for CQR." But: "If any portion of your CQR is incomplete, your certification and registration will be discontinued."

The MRI SSA format (distinct from the certification exam): 80 questions, 80 minutes, same four categories but evenly weighted — Patient Care 10 (3 CE), Safety 10 (4 CE), Image Production 30 as 10/10/10 (7+6+5 CE), Procedures 30 as 10/10/10 (5+3+3 CE). Maximum 36 targeted CE credits.

Note the structural difference: the SSA weights all four domains equally; the certification exam is 53% Image Production. Do not reuse a certification study plan for CQR.

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29. ARMRIT in full

Primary source throughout: ARMRIT's Candidate Handbook, "Valid as of 7/25/2026." [S14]

29.1 The five eligibility pathways

Pathway 4 source credentials include ARRT/LRT/CRT radiographers, NMTCB or ARRT nuclear medicine, ARDMS or CCI sonographers, RN/LPN/LVN/CNA, RRT, PT, PA, MD/DO/DC/DPM, EMT, surgical tech, medical assistant, EEG tech, CVT, and foreign medical graduates. Foreign credentials must be evaluated by one of five named agencies (A&M Logos, Globe Language Service, Trustforte, WES, ECE).

29.2 Education, exam, fees, renewal

Accreditation: ARMRIT runs its own Commission on Accreditation (COA) and lists 18 accredited programs — AIMS Education (NJ), AMG Medical Institute (NJ), USDOL Apprenticeship, Aquarius Institute (IL), CNI College (CA), Casa Loma College (CA, TN), JVS SoCal (CA), Med College (FL), Midwestern Career College (IL), National Polytechnic College (CA), Pulse Radiology Institute (FL), Smith Chason College dba WCUI (CA, AZ), Tesla Institute of MRI Technology (VA). Two are provisional pending site visits. Format is an 18-month certificate or an associate degree.

Note the structural difference: this is self-accreditation — ARMRIT accredits the schools whose graduates it certifies. ARRT relies on external programmatic accreditation (JRCERT) and does not accredit programs.

Exam:

• 225 multiple-choice questions, one right/best answer; explicitly no "A and B / C and D" items
• 3 hours 30 minutes
• Passing score: 75
• Four content areas, no published weights: MR Physics · Clinical Applications · Bioeffects, Safety and Patient Care · MR Cross-Sectional Anatomy
• Candidate receives a score sheet plus category breakdown; PDF certificate emailed on passing

⚠️ Widely-circulated third-party claim of "240 questions in three sections of 80, four hours, 70% to pass" is wrong. Use ARMRIT's own handbook figures.

Vendor change: ARMRIT moved from PSI to Kryterion effective 1 July 2026, delivering via Webassessor® in a hybrid model — physical test centers and online proctored exams. The armrit.org/certified.php page still describes PSI and "over 1,000 testing sites"; the website is stale relative to the handbook.

Attempt rules: 6 months from completed application to sit, covering all 3 attempts — "No Extensions! No Exceptions!" Maximum 3 attempts, 60 days minimum between. Failing three times requires an ARMRIT-designated review course and restarting 1 year after the last attempt.

Fees: Application $300.00, non-refundable. A separate computer-based testing fee is due for each attempt — the handbook states this three times but never publishes the amount. Optional study guide PDF $50.00. Triennial renewal $300.

Renewal and CE — note this differs from ARRT:

• Three-year cycle (not two), set to 3 years from original certification
• 8 MRI CME credits per year, 24 per three-year period
• Credits must come from AHRA, ACCME, AMA, ASRT, or another qualified CME-granting organization
• "MRI" must be in the title of the activity
• Renewal is by signed self-attestation; transcripts submitted only on audit. Inability to document CME on demand is grounds for immediate revocation

Application process: paper packages accepted through 31 May 2026; from 1 July 2026 all applications run through portal.armrit.org.

29.3 Recognition — the accurate picture

States naming ARMRIT in licensure eligibility (6): New Hampshire (Board of Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy) · New Mexico (Medical Imaging & Radiation Therapy Act Committee) · North Dakota (Medical Imaging & Radiation Therapy Board) · Oregon (Board of Medical Imaging) · Washington (by statute) · West Virginia (Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy Technology Board of Examiners)

Recognized as a certifying body, not licensure: Ohio Department of Health.

Sub-state: Los Angeles County, CA Department of Health Services includes ARMRIT in MRI Technologist selection requirements. (A county employer requirement, not California state licensure — California's scheme is ionizing-radiation only.)

National and federal: American College of Radiology MRI Accreditation Committee (recognized as an autonomous certifying body, 17 September 2020) · ACE CREDIT · USDOL Office of Apprenticeship (ONET 29-2035.00, RAPIDS 1115) · CMS via the four MIPPA-designated accrediting organizations · Institute for Credentialing Excellence (member) · Intersocietal Accreditation Commission · The Joint Commission · RadSite · Veterans Administration (reimburses application and exam fees) · ONET OnLine.

ARMRIT's strongest genuine claim: all four CMS-designated advanced-imaging accrediting organizations (ACR, IAC, TJC, RadSite) accept ARMRIT, which is what allows an ARMRIT-only technologist to work at a facility billing Medicare for MRI under MIPPA. §21.3 independently confirms ACR's technologist qualification criteria naming ARMRIT alongside ARRT and CAMRT.

⚠️ A misleading claim to correct. A school-operated site (teslamr.com, run by Tesla Institute of MRI Technology — itself an ARMRIT-accredited program) claims "Over 40 states recognize ARMRIT for MRI practice." This conflates non-regulation with recognition. Forty-plus states don't regulate MRI at all, which is not the same as affirmatively recognizing ARMRIT. The same page also states "24 CE credits every 2-year renewal cycle," contradicting ARMRIT's own handbook (24 per three-year cycle). Treat school-published ARMRIT guidance as promotional and prefer the handbook on every point of conflict.

29.4 ARMRIT vs ARRT (MR)

The career-ceiling consideration: an ARMRIT-only technologist cannot stack ARRT post-primary credentials. Given that CT/MRI dual-modality roles are standard — BLS's own example job titles for 29-2035 include "Computed Tomography/Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CT/MRI) Technologist" — this is a material long-term constraint. A candidate with geographic flexibility, or who may ever want CT, is structurally better served by the ARRT route.

30. State licensure

30.1 The structural point

Most state medical-imaging licensure statutes exist under radiation-control authority and therefore reach ionizing radiation only. MRI, using no ionizing radiation, falls outside them. This is why a state can license radiographers heavily and not license MRI technologists at all.

ASRT: "Currently 37 states have licensure for radiography and even fewer states license other disciplines." ARRT: "More than 75% of states have licensing laws covering the practice of radiologic technology." Neither organization's public page enumerates which states cover MRI specifically, and ASRT's "states that regulate" sub-page returned HTTP 404 at time of access. [S37, S38]

30.2 States that regulate MRI

The six states in §29.3 — NH, NM, ND, OR, WA, WV — must license MRI for ARMRIT to be named as a qualifying credential, so this list is reliable as far as it goes.

Verification results on commonly-cited states:

[GAP — the six regulating state boards were never directly consulted.] Application forms, fee schedules, CE hour counts, and renewal periods for NH, NM, ND, OR, WA, and WV were not collected, and they differ materially. All MRI-licensure claims above trace to ARMRIT's own recognition list — specific enough to be credible, but a self-interested source. Checking the six board sites directly is the single highest-value remaining research step in this document.

30.3 The federal CARE Act

Consistency, Accuracy, Responsibility, and Excellence in Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy Act.

Status: has never passed. Not enacted in any Congress since first introduction in 2000.

No CARE Act introduction was found in the 114th through 119th Congresses. Radiology bills actually moving in recent Congresses are different measures — the Medicare Access to Radiology Care Act (S. 5492, 118th) and the ROCR Value Based Program Act (S. 1031 / H.R. 8404).

Best assessment: dormant since 2013, not live in the 119th Congress.

Critically for MRI: the CARE Act as drafted may not have covered MRI at all. Contemporaneous trade coverage of the 110th Congress version lists covered professions as "nuclear medicine, interventional radiography, cardiovascular technologists, sonographers, radiologist assistants, and bone densitometrists" — MRI technologists are not named. Even passage would likely not have created a federal MRI standard. [S39–S42]

31. Adjacent credentials

31.1 MR safety — ABMRS is now IBMRS

The American Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety has rebranded. abmrs.org now issues a 301 redirect to ibmrs.org — the International Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety. Certifications are branded MR Safety Certified™ (MRSC™). Most secondary sources still say "ABMRS"; anything citing abmrs.org needs updating. [S43]

Four credentials, not three:

Exam: 100 questions, mixed multiple choice, true/false, and multi-answer. Built on seven subject-matter domains. Delivered at Prometric in North America. 3 attempts maximum, 60 days minimum between. Immediate pass/fail on completion; detailed report emailed within hours. [Time limit and passing standard UNVERIFIED — not published.]

Fee: $350 USD per attempt, identical for all four credentials (USA pricing). Free reschedule 30+ days out.

Renewal — unusual and worth noting: valid 10 years from successful examination. Recertification is by re-examination for each title. "Continuing education (CE) is not required to renew any IBMRS credential." There is no CE pathway.

IBMRS operates a public credential-search directory and a verification API with cryptographically signed responses, and states it is "entirely autonomous... independent of, and in no way affiliated with, any and all other credentialing bodies."

Career note: with the 2024 ACR manual formalizing the MRSO role (§17.4) and the 2028 ARRT changes elevating safety (§16), R.T.(MR) → MRSO is an increasingly coherent and marketable progression.

31.2 ARRT post-primary stacking

ARRT post-primary disciplines: Bone Densitometry, Breast Sonography, Cardiac Interventional Radiography, Computed Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Mammography, Vascular Interventional Radiography, Vascular Sonography.

For an R.T.(MR) holder the practical stacks are CT (by far the most common), Vascular Interventional Radiography, Breast Sonography, and Mammography.

31.3 CBMRIT

No evidence of an active organization by this acronym was found in any source consulted. It may be defunct, a misremembering, or a confusion with NMTCB or CCI. For MRI, the US field is effectively a duopoly: ARRT and ARMRIT.

31.4 International

fee schedules, CPD hour counts, and renewal cycles were not collected.

Structural observation: the Anglophone international pattern is that MRI is a scope-of-practice within a general radiographer registration, not a separate credential. Canada is the partial exception. ARMRIT's "MRI as standalone specialty" model is a US outlier. [S44–S47]

32. Career data

32.1 BLS — SOC 29-2035, May 2025

Source note: figures below are May 2025 OEWS, the most recent release, pulled from the BLS Public Data API v2 because both bls.gov/oes/current/oes292035.htm and the OOH page return HTTP 403 to automated fetch. The API returns the same underlying estimates. Spot-check in a browser before publication. [S48, S49]

Year over year: May 2024 median was $88,180. The May 2025 median of $95,480 is an 8.3% increase — a notably large single-year jump, consistent with widely reported imaging staffing shortages, and worth sanity-checking against the published HTML table.

32.2 Top-paying states (annual median, May 2025)

Three of the six states that license MRI technologists — Washington, Oregon, New Hampshire — appear in the top ten by wage. Suggestive but not causal; all three are also high-cost-of-living states.

Top-employing states: CA 3,570 ($124,000) · NY 3,240 ($113,270) · TX 2,930 ($96,780) · FL 2,860 ($84,330) · IL 2,760 ($95,380) · PA 2,250 ($91,120) · OH 1,840 ($87,670) · GA 1,800 ($92,060) · MA 1,490 ($110,600) · TN 1,350 ($78,610) · MI 1,270 ($84,620) · NJ 1,250 ($103,930)

32.3 Industry — the standout finding

Outpatient Care Centers pay a $140,390 median — roughly 47% above the national median — but employ only 1,300 people. That is the single most actionable wage finding in this dataset.

32.4 Growth

The OOH combined category "Radiologic and MRI Technologists" projects 5% growth 2024–2034 — faster than average — with about 15,400 openings per year over the decade.

The MRI-specific (29-2035 alone) projection was not retrieved. The BLS Employment Projections national matrix confirms 29-2035 exists as a separate line with example titles including "MRI Technologist" and "CT/MRI Technologist," but the numeric projection cells are JavaScript-rendered and did not extract. Pull manually from data.bls.gov/projections/nationalMatrix?queryParams=29-2035&ioType=o.

Top-paying metropolitan areas: not collected — this requires enumerating ~400 MSA series against the BLS API, exceeding the unregistered daily quota. State data above is a partial proxy. A free BLS API key would complete it.

ASRT Wage and Salary Survey: not retrieved — published biennially, most content gated behind membership.

32a. The 2025–2026 labor market and technology context

32a.1 Staffing — ASRT's own survey

ASRT 2025 Radiologic Sciences Staffing and Workplace Survey (fielded March–May 2025; 475 respondents of 18,419 department managers; 2.6% response rate; ±4.4% margin of error at 95% confidence):

ASRT: "Vacancy rates for all medical imaging disciplines are above the rates reported in 2020."

Honest caveat: a 2.6% response rate is very low and vulnerable to response bias — managers with vacancies have more reason to respond. Directionally credible, precisely uncertain. The ±4.4% margin ASRT reports does not capture non-response bias.

What it means for a candidate: MRI vacancy rose while five other modalities fell. MRI and CT are now the two tightest labor markets in imaging. This is the strongest available argument when asking an employer to fund cross-training — you are proposing to fill a 17.4%-vacancy role. roughly 12–15% of the R.T. workforce is retirement-eligible within 3–5 years, and accredited R.T. program enrollment reportedly fell ~8% in 2025-26.

32a.2 Low-field and portable MRI

Hyperfine Swoop — three regulatory milestones in the reporting period:

• 2 June 2025 — FDA clearance of a next-generation Swoop powered by Optive AI software; higher SNR, improved resolution and uniformity, faster acquisition.
• December 2025 — FDA clearance of a multi-direction diffusion-weighted imaging sequence targeted at stroke detection, expanding into acute neuro care.
• April 2026 — CE Mark and UKCA approval, enabling European and UK commercialization.

Significance for technologists: point-of-care MRI moves scanning into ICU, ED, and neurology offices — settings with different safety-zone geometry, different screening logistics, and different staffing models than a shielded suite. Note also that Hyperfine's advances are software and AI advances, not magnet advances — the value sits in reconstruction.

32a.3 Deep-learning reconstruction

DL-based reconstruction — CNNs transforming undersampled, noisy k-space into high-fidelity images — is now mainstream, addressing the resolution and SNR limits of conventional reconstruction while cutting acquisition time. Reviewed in AJNR 47(1):9 (2026).

Direct exam relevance: this sits squarely inside Data Acquisition, Processing, and Storage — the weakest national section at 7.5. Undersampling, parallel imaging, compressed sensing, and reconstruction are exactly the concepts DL reconstruction builds on. The technology trend and the exam weakness point at the same material, which makes this an unusually efficient place to study.

32a.4 What is NOT on the exam

None of the AI or DL content above appears in the current ARRT MRI content specification, which was Board-approved January 2024 and implemented 1 February 2025. There is no AI category. Study the published blueprint, not the trend coverage. Expect AI content to enter through a future practice-analysis cycle — note that the 2028 proposal (§16) adds safety, not AI.

32.5 The post-primary economics

For a radiographer weighing the MRI post-primary pathway: a $225 application fee, 16 hours of structured education ($40–$375 depending on provider), and 125 documented procedures, against a five-figure annual wage differential and access to the highest-paying imaging setting in the dataset. The arithmetic is not close.

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33. What this report does not establish

Honesty about gaps is more useful than false completeness. The following remain open:

1. Requirements in the six MRI-licensing states. Application, fees, CE hours, renewal cycles for NH, NM, ND, OR, WA, WV. All MRI-licensure claims trace to ARMRIT's own (self-interested) recognition list. Highest-value remaining step.
2. CARE Act status requires manual confirmation at congress.gov. The conclusion — dormant since 2013, never enacted, probably never covered MRI — is well-supported but rests partly on absence of evidence.
3. BLS metro-area wages and the MRI-specific growth projection.
4. ASRT Wage and Salary Survey MRI figures.
5. ARMRIT's per-attempt testing fee — the $300 application fee is confirmed; the Kryterion fee is not published anywhere reachable.
6. IBMRS time limit, passing standard, and per-credential specifics beyond the $350 fee and three-attempt policy.
7. ACR phantom QC numerics — sourced from a secondary summary; verify against the ACR MRI Quality Control Manual before printing.
8. ACR accreditation cycle length (3 years widely reported, not confirmed on an ACR page).
9. TJC National Performance Goal #13 MRI elements of performance and effective date (site returns 403).
10. IEC local SAR values, partial-body formulas, PNS constants, and the SAR averaging window — the standard is paywalled. Whole-body (2/4 W/kg) and head (3.2 W/kg) figures are primary-sourced via ACR and FDA.
11. Current editions and prices for roughly eight textbooks, marked in place.
12. Whether Mosby's Exam Review for MRI was ever published.
13. ACR–ASNR position statement revision date.
14. Job-posting sample on ARRT vs ARMRIT acceptance — no systematic sample collected. ARMRIT's own job board self-selects and is not evidence.
15. International fee schedules and CPD requirements for CAMRT, HCPC, AHPRA, EFRS.
16. Published tuition for essentially every named MRI education program (§26b.4) — the single weakest-covered item in this report.
17. Exact JRCERT-accredited MR program count (proxy: 52 programs with ARRT candidates) and JRCERT's 75% benchmark in JRCERT's own words.
18. The tutorial-length discrepancy — handbook says 8 minutes, Exam Day page says 18.
19. ARRT reschedule fee, ID taxonomy specifics, certificate issuance practice, and annual renewal date convention.

33a. The three things that matter most

If a reader takes nothing else from this document:

1. Image Production is 106 of 200 items — 53% of the exam — and its Data Acquisition sub-section is the weakest-performing content area nationally (7.5 mean). Weight study time accordingly. This is derived from ARRT's own published section data, not opinion. Anyone allocating time evenly across the eight categories is misallocating by roughly a factor of two.

2. Benchmark practice exams against ~66% correct, not 75. The scaled pass score of 75 is not a percentage; ARRT publishes the approximate raw threshold as 66%. Target low-to-mid 70s raw for a real buffer. A candidate targeting 75% raw is over-targeting by ~9 points; one targeting exactly 66% has no margin at all. This single correction is probably worth more than any study-schedule advice.

3. For post-primary candidates, the bottleneck is clinical access, not coursework. SEUs cost $40–$375 and take days. The 125 repetitions across 21+ procedures — capped at 7 per day and 1 per patient per day, inside a rolling 24-month window — require sustained scanner access. Solve that first. And note the rule that dissolves the most commonly assumed blocker: any ARRT-registered technologist can verify (post-primary credential not required), and verifiers may act remotely — only the candidate must be physically present.

34. Sources

All URLs retrieved 18 August 2026.

ARRT primary documents

[S1] MRI Clinical Experience Requirements (Implementation 1 Feb 2025; V 2026.08.04) — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/72318c8b-72cd-427e-990b-4df69e375474/Magnetic_Resonance_Imaging_Clinical_Experience_Requirements_2025.pdf [S2] MRI Didactic and Clinical Competency Requirements (V 2026.07.30) — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/79ed2a68-efc2-40fa-809f-2fbe43b695c4/Magnetic_Resonance_Imaging_Didactic_and_Clinical_Competency_Requirements_2025.pdf [S3] Structured Education Requirements — MRI (V 2024.07.01) — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/992575f6-24f8-470d-87ef-7db8eaf78768/Magnetic%20Resonance%20Imaging%20Structured%20Education%202025.pdf [S4] Examination Content Specifications — MRI (V 2024.03.05) — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/8a6d78b2-c8bf-4a57-b824-85a9bc5a98e5/Magnetic%20Resonance%20Imaging%20Content%20Specifications%202025.pdf [S5] 2026 Primary Eligibility Pathway Handbook — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/e2811114-6ed8-49d3-8dd0-1f53769aa33d/arrt-primary-handbook.pdf [S6] 2026 Postprimary Eligibility Pathway Handbook (contains the stale 20-pilot figure) — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/d7b6ef38-4221-44f1-9a47-56296270b336/postprimary-eligibility-pathway-handbook.pdf [S7] ARRT Education Requirements (rev. 31 March 2026) — https://www.arrt.org/pdfs/governing-documents/continuing-education-requirements.pdf [S8] ARRT Standards of Ethics (rev. 31 March 2026) — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/9a769d60-98f4-4c8d-a006-c8478e5b6e04/ARRT_Standards_of_Ethics.pdf [S9] ARRT Annual Exam Report – 2025 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/c2a773df-03c0-4798-a8a5-ad7f57532562/ARRT%20Annual%20Exam%20Report%20-%202025.pdf [S10] ARRT Annual Exam Report – 2024 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/61b9883a-9132-4ad4-a711-a7d1af2c44c8/ARRT%20Annual%20Exam%20Report%20-%202024.pdf [S11] "ARRT Seeks Comments on Proposed Changes to MRI Documents" (17 Aug 2026) — https://www.arrt.org/news/article/2026/08/17/arrt-seeks-comments-on-mri-documents-2026 [S12] "Updated MRI Documents" (27 March 2024) — https://www.arrt.org/news/article/2024/03/27/updated-mri-documents-2024 [S13] "Updated MRI Clinical Experience Requirements Document" (1 Oct 2024) — https://www.arrt.org/news/article/2024/10/01/updated-mri-clinical-experience-requirements-document-2024

ARRT web pages

• MRI credential — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/credential-options/mri
• Content Specifications index — https://www.arrt.org/Content-Specifications
• Primary requirements — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/primary-requirements
• Postprimary requirements — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/postprimary-requirement
• Recognized accreditation agencies — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/primary-requirements/education-requirements-primary/arrt-recognized-accreditation-agencies
• Supporting Category Requirements — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/postprimary-requirements/education-requirements-postprimary/supporting-category-requirements
• Ethics Requirements — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/ethics/ethics-requirements
• Ethics Review Preapplication — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/ethics/ethics-review-preapplication
• Types of Ethics Violations — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/ethics/types-of-ethics-violations [S26a] Application Fees — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/how-to-apply/application-fees
• Continuing Education — https://www.arrt.org/pages/resources/maintaining-credentials/continuing-education
• Continuing Qualifications Requirements — https://www.arrt.org/pages/resources/maintaining-credentials/continuing-qualifications-requirements
• Examination FAQ (ARRT does not endorse study materials) — https://www.arrt.org/pages/contact/frequent-questions/examination-public
• State Licensing — https://www.arrt.org/pages/about-the-profession/state-licensing
• Reference Documents by Discipline — https://www.arrt.org/pages/arrt-reference-documents/by-discipline
• "ARRT Introduces New Credential to Enhance Patient Care" (28 July 2025) — https://www.arrt.org/news/article/2025/07/28/arrt-introduces-iamr-credential
• MRI Task Inventory 2025 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/fb2e1193-26ce-4f5b-9da6-50e8abe9a94f/Magnetic%20Resonance%20Imaging%20Task%20Inventory%202025.pdf
• MRI Structured Self-Assessment Content Specifications 2025 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/80170fdf-96c0-4a1b-ab1f-5cb4bb80b6cd/Magnetic%20Resonance%20Imaging%20%20Structured%20Self-Assessment%202025.pdf
• MRI Practice Analysis Report 2025 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/af0bc1b6-2f6b-4d5e-bdf2-8235961df668/Magnetic%20Resonance%20Imaging%20Practice%20Analysis%20Report%202025.pdf
• MRI Standard Setting Report 2020 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/ca94e0ad-f8e4-454f-9be7-593b0569a270/MRI%20Standard%20Setting%20Report%202020.pdf

ARMRIT

[S14] ARMRIT Candidate Handbook, valid as of 25 July 2026, 22 pp — https://www.armrit.org/pdf/APPLY72526Kryterion.pdf [S15] ARMRIT Examination Overview — https://www.armrit.org/pdf/NewARMRITExamOverview.pdf [S16] ARMRIT Certification / About / Recognition — https://www.armrit.org/certified.php · /about.php · /recognition.php

• Accredited Schools (COA) — https://www.armrit.org/schools.php
• Application — https://www.armrit.org/application.php · Portal — https://portal.armrit.org/armrit-registration/
• Practice exam — https://www.armrit.org/test.php

Safety literature

[S17] ACR Manual on MR Safety, 2024 edition updated March 2026, 152 pp — https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/americancoldf5f-acrorgf92a-productioncb02-3650/media/ACR/Files/Clinical/Radiology-Safety/Manual-on-MR-Safety.pdf [S18] Changes to ACR Manual on MR Safety ("What's New?"), March 2026 — https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/americancoldf5f-acrorgf92a-productioncb02-3650/media/ACR/Files/Clinical/Radiology-Safety/Changes-to-ACR-Manual-on-MR-Safety.pdf [S19] Pedrosa I, Altman DA, Dillman JR, et al. "American College of Radiology Manual on MR Safety: 2024 Update and Revisions." Radiology 2025;315(1). doi:10.1148/radiol.241405 — https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.241405

• MR Safety Resources landing — https://www.acr.org/Clinical-Resources/Clinical-Tools-and-Reference/radiology-safety/mr-safety [S20] ACR Manual on Contrast Media, 2026, 126 pp — https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/americancoldf5f-acrorgf92a-productioncb02-3650/media/ACR/Files/Clinical/Contrast-Manual/ACR-Manual-on-Contrast-Media.pdf · landing https://www.acr.org/Clinical-Resources/Clinical-Tools-and-Reference/Contrast-Manual [S21] FDA Drug Safety Communication on GBCA retention, 19 Dec 2017 / updated 16 May 2018 — https://www.sentinelinitiative.org/news-events/fda-safety-communications-labeling-changes/fda-warns-gadolinium-based-contrast-agents [S22] McDonald RJ et al. "Gadolinium Retention: A Research Roadmap from the 2018 NIH/ACR/RSNA Workshop on Gadolinium Chelates." Radiology 2018;289(2):517–534. doi:10.1148/radiol.2018181151 · ACR–ASNR Position Statement — https://www.asnr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ACR_ASNR_Position_Statement_on_the_Use_of_Gadolinium_Contrast_Agents.pdf [S23] FDA, Criteria for Significant Risk Investigations of Magnetic Resonance Diagnostic Devices, guidance #793, issued 20 June 2014 — https://www.fda.gov/files/medical%20devices/published/Criteria-for-Significant-Risk-Investigations-of-Magnetic-Resonance-Diagnostic-Devices---Guidance-for-Industry-and-Food-and-Drug-Administration-Staff-(PDF).pdf [S24] ASTM F2503-23e1 (2023) — https://store.astm.org/f2503-23.html [S25] FDA, Testing and Labeling Medical Devices for Safety in the MR Environment — https://www.fda.gov/media/74201/download [S26] Shellock FG, Crues JV III (eds), MRI Bioeffects, Safety, and Patient Management, 2nd Ed, 2022, ISBN 978-0-9891632-8-6 — https://www.mrisafetybook.com [S27] MRIsafety.com — https://www.mrisafety.com · ISMRT Shellock guideline PDFs — https://www.ismrm.org/smrt/safety_page/ [S28] Delfino JG, Krainak DM, Flesher SA, Miller DL. "MRI-related FDA adverse event reports: A 10-yr review." Medical Physics 2019;46(12):5562–5571. doi:10.1002/mp.13768 — https://aapm.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mp.13768 [S29] TJC Sentinel Event Alert Issue 38 (14 Feb 2008, RETIRED) — https://psnet.ahrq.gov/issue/preventing-accidents-and-injuries-mri-suite [S30] TJC National Performance Goal #13 — https://www.jointcommission.org/en-us/standards/national-performance-goals/protecting-patients-and-providers-in-imaging (403 to automated fetch) · Gilk T, Kanal E, JMRI 2013, doi:10.1002/jmri.24027 [S31] ACR Complete Accreditation Information: MRI (rev. 9 Apr 2025) — https://accreditationsupport.acr.org/support/solutions/articles/11000063276-complete-accreditation-information-mri-revised-4-9-2025- [S32] ACR Large/Medium Phantom Testing: MRI (rev. 6 Feb 2026) — https://accreditationsupport.acr.org/support/solutions/articles/11000061035-large-medium-phantom-testing-mri-revised-2-6-26- [S33] ACR Testing Overview: MRI (rev. 22 Oct 2025) — https://accreditationsupport.acr.org/support/solutions/articles/11000061018-testing-overview-mri-revised-10-22-2025- [S34] ACR Technologist: MRI/Breast MRI — https://accreditationsupport.acr.org/support/solutions/articles/11000055859-technologist-mri-breast-mri-revised-12-12-19- [S35] "MRI ACR Phantom QC: The Seven Tests" (secondary source for phantom numerics) — https://www.diagnosticradphys.com/physicspulse/diagnostic-medical-physics/mri-acr-phantom-qc/ [S36] IAC Standards and Guidelines for MRI Accreditation, 1 April 2025 — https://intersocietal.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/IACMRIStandards2025.pdf

Licensure and legislation

[S37] ASRT State Licensure — https://www.asrt.org/promotions/licensure [S38] ARRT State Licensing — https://www.arrt.org/pages/about-the-profession/state-licensing [S39] AuntMinnie, "ASRT takes another run at RT credentialing with CARE bill," 2007 — https://www.auntminnie.com/clinical-news/digital-x-ray/article/15582072/asrt-takes-another-run-at-rt-credentialing-with-care-bill [S40] H.R.1146, 113th Congress — https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1146 [S41] S.642, 113th Congress — https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/642 [S42] H.R.2104, 112th Congress — https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/2104/text

Adjacent and international

[S43] IBMRS (formerly ABMRS) — https://ibmrs.org/ · Exam Registration https://ibmrs.org/exam-registration/ · FAQs https://ibmrs.org/faqs/ [S44] CAMRT Certification — https://www.camrt.ca/mrt-profession/certification/ [S45] HCPC Registration — https://www.hcpc-uk.org/registration/ [S46] Medical Radiation Practice Board of Australia — https://www.medicalradiationpracticeboard.gov.au/Registration.aspx [S47] EFRS — https://www.efrs.eu/

Career data

[S48] BLS Public Data API v2, OEWS series for SOC 29-2035, May 2025 — https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/ [S49] BLS OEWS 29-2035 — https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes292035.htm (403 to automated fetch) · OOH Radiologic and MRI Technologists — https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/radiologic-technologists.htm (403) · Employment Projections matrix — https://data.bls.gov/projections/nationalMatrix?queryParams=29-2035&ioType=o

Books

• MRI in Practice 5th Ed — https://books.wiley.com/titles/9781119391968
• Handbook of MRI Technique 5th Ed — https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/handbook-of-mri-technique-5th-edition-p-9781119759331
• MRI Registry Review: Tech to Tech — https://www.wiley.com/en-us/mri-registry-review-tech-to-tech-questions-and-answers-p-9781119757931
• MRI Physics: Tech to Tech — https://www.wiley.com/en-us/mri-physics-tech-to-tech-explanations-p-9781119615026
• MRI at a Glance 3rd Ed — https://www.wiley-vch.de/en/areas-interest/medicine-health-care/mri-at-a-glance-978-1-119-05355-2
• Haacke 2nd Ed — https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Magnetic+Resonance+Imaging%3A+Physical+Principles+and+Sequence+Design%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9780471720850
• MRI: The Basics 4th Ed — https://shop.lww.com/MRI--The-Basics/p/9781496384355
• Torres' Patient Care 10th Ed — https://shop.lww.com/Torres--Patient-Care-in-Imaging-Technology/p/9781975192518
• MRI from Picture to Proton 3rd Ed — https://cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/medicine/medical-imaging/mri-picture-proton-3rd-edition?format=HB&isbn=9781107643239
• Lange Q&A MRI Examination — https://www.mheducation.com/highered/mhp/product/lange-q-mri-examination.html
• LANGE Review: MRI Clinical Concepts (eText) — https://www.vitalsource.com/products/lange-review-mri-clinical-concepts-and-imaging-w-zachary-a-rich-michael-v9781264634149
• CT & MRI Pathology 3rd Ed — https://www.vitalsource.com/products/ct-amp-mri-pathology-a-pocket-atlas-third-edition-michael-l-grey-jagan-mohan-v9781260121957
• Sectional Anatomy for Imaging Professionals 5th Ed — https://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/sectional-anatomy-for-imaging-professionals-9780323827881.html · Breedlove authorship — https://www.boisestate.edu/news/2026/02/23/breedloves-textbook-leads-next-generation-of-medical-imaging-education/
• Fundamentals of Body MRI 3rd Ed — https://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/fundamentals-of-body-mri-9780323833813.html
• Duke Review of MRI Physics 2nd Ed — https://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/duke-review-of-mri-physics-case-review-series-9780323530385.html
• Patient Care in Radiography 10th Ed — https://www.asia.elsevierhealth.com/patient-care-in-radiography-9780323654401.html
• Mosby's Exam Review for MRI (unavailable record) — https://www.inspectioncopy.elsevier.com/book/details/9780323789950
• Bushong MRI 4th Ed — https://shop.elsevier.com/books/magnetic-resonance-imaging/bushong/978-0-323-07354-7
• Physics of Clinical MR Taught Through Images — https://shop.thieme.com/The-Physics-of-Clinical-MR-Taught-Through-Images/9781626234284
• MRI Handbook (Elmaoğlu & Çelik) — https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-1096-6
• Resonancia magnética 3ª ed — https://tienda.elsevier.es/resonancia-magnetica-dirigida-a-tecnicos-superiores-en-imagen-para-el-diagnostico-9788413828831.html

Prep resources

• MRIQuiz.com — https://www.mriquiz.com/ · guarantee terms https://www.mriquiz.com/moneyback.htm
• Clover Learning MRI Cross-Trainer — https://cloverlearning.com/plans/cross-trainer/magnetic-resonance-imaging-certification
• MRI All-In-One — https://www.mriallinone.com/ · free questions /free_mri_review_questions
• arrtmriexam.com — https://arrtmriexam.com/
• Medical Professionals MRI Registry Exam Prep — https://www.medical-professionals.com/en/courses/mri-registry-exam-prep/ · MRI CE https://www.medical-professionals.com/en/mri-ce-credits/
• Prepry — https://www.prepry.com/free-practice-test
• OpenExamPrep — https://open-exam-prep.com/practice/arrt-mri
• ASRT membership — https://www.asrt.org/membership/membership-categories/active-member · MR Basics https://www.asrt.org/main/continuing-education/earn-ce/featured-ce/mr-basics-credit · MR study guides https://www.asrt.org/students/study-guides/magnetic-resonance
• eRADIMAGING — https://www.eradimaging.com/
• Get Your CEU — https://www.getyourceu.com/
• CE4RT — https://ce4rt.com/ · X-Ray Lady — https://x-raylady.com/
• MTMI — https://www.mtmi.net/webinar/mri-registry-review · MRSO Certificate https://www.mtmi.net/course/magnetic-resonance-safety-officer-mrso-certificate-program
• W. Faulkner & Associates — https://t2star.com/mr-cha.html · iBook https://books.apple.com/us/book/mri-registry-prep/id1084899735
• mriquestions.com — https://www.mriquestions.com/
• MRIMaster — https://mrimaster.com/
• Radiopaedia MRI physics — https://radiopaedia.org/courses/imaging-physics-mri
• IMAIOS — https://www.imaios.com/en/subscribe
• ISMRT — https://www.ismrm.org/ismrt/ · training programs https://www.ismrm.org/smrt/resources/mr-training-programs/
• MRI Pro (iOS) — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mri-pro/id6472557403
• MRI MASTER (iOS) — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mri-master/id1627990872
• MRI Made Easy (iOS) — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mri-made-easy-well-almost/id1077847614
• Radiology Tutorials — https://www.youtube.com/@radiologytutorials
• MRI All-In-One Registry Review — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClWHnShd7T18g8nwlaynHEA

Accreditation and programs

• JRCERT — https://www.jrcert.org/ · Find a Program https://www.jrcert.org/find-a-program/ · Program Effectiveness Data https://www.jrcert.org/program-effectiveness-data/ · 2025 Organizational Report https://www.jrcert.org/2025-organizational-report-now-available/
• Cleveland Clinic Primary MRI Program — https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/education/school-health-professions/programs/primary-mri-program
• Thomas Jefferson University MRI concentration — https://www.jefferson.edu/academics/colleges-schools-institutes/health-professions/departments-programs/medical-imaging-radiation-sciences/degrees-programs/bs-programs/concentrations/magnetic-resonance-imaging.html
• Mayo Clinic MRI Program (Minnesota) — https://college.mayo.edu/academics/health-sciences-education/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-program-minnesota/
• Penn State Schuylkill MRI Post-Primary — https://schuylkill.psu.edu/continuing-education/professional-development/mri
• UPMC MRI Certificate Program — https://www.upmc.com/healthcare-professionals/education/allied-health/advanced-imaging-technologist-program/mri-certificate-program
• University of Cincinnati MRI Certificate — https://www.cahs.uc.edu/academic-programs/certificates-and-minors/magnetic-resonance-imaging-certificate.html
• Pulse Radiology Online MRI Program — https://pulseradiology.com/

Additional ARRT and outcomes sources

• ARRT Annual Exam Report – 2023 — https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/406ac8c6-58e8-00b3-e3c1-0c312965deb2/e101af00-b6af-4633-a335-55e72613cc42/ARRT%20Annual%20Exam%20Report%20-%202023.pdf
• ARRT Exam Statistics — https://www.arrt.org/pages/arrt-reference-documents/by-document-type/exam-statistics
• ARRT What to Expect on Exam Day — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/exam/exam-day
• ARRT Taking the Exam (accommodations) — https://www.arrt.org/pages/resources/exam-information/taking-the-exam/taking-the-exam
• ARRT Exam Scoring — https://www.arrt.org/pages/earn-arrt-credentials/initial-requirements/exam/after-the-exam/exam-scoring
• ARRT Clinical Experience Verifiers — https://www.arrt.org/pages/resources/earn-additional-credentials/earn-additional-credentials-postprimary/clinical-experience-requirements/verifiers
• ARRT Postprimary Pathway: MRI — https://www.arrt.org/pages/resources/earn-additional-credentials/earn-additional-credentials-postprimary/magnetic-resonance-imaging
• ARRT Annual Renewal — https://www.arrt.org/pages/resources/maintaining-credentials/annual-renewal
• Pearson VUE ARRT client page — https://home.pearsonvue.com/arrt

Labor market and technology

• ASRT, "Staffing and Workplace Survey Shows Vacancy Rate Increases Near Record Highs" (24 July 2025) — https://www.asrt.org/main/news-publications/news/article/2025/07/24/asrt-staffing-and-workplace-survey-shows-vacancy-rate-increases-near-record-highs-aligning-with-overall-health-care-profession-trends
• Hyperfine, FDA clearance of next-generation Swoop with Optive AI (2 June 2025) — https://investors.hyperfine.io/news-releases/news-release-details/hyperfine-announces-fda-clearance-new-next-generation-swoopr
• Hyperfine, FDA clearance of first Optive AI update with advanced diffusion imaging (Dec 2025) — https://investors.hyperfine.io/news-releases/news-release-details/hyperfine-announces-fda-clearance-first-optive-aitm-software
• "Deep Learning–Based Acceleration in MRI: Current Landscape and Clinical Applications in Neuroradiology," AJNR 47(1):9 — https://www.ajnr.org/content/47/1/9
• Medical Professionals / TakeCE, ARRT Structured Education Credits — https://www.takece.com/structured-education
• Get Your CEU, Structured Education — https://www.getyourceu.com/structured-education-se/

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ARRT contact: 651.687.0048 or 877.560.ARRT (2778). Psychometrics and exam requirements: 651.681.3106. ARMRIT: 561-450-6880.