ARRT exam study guide: the Radiography content specifications

How the 200 scored questions split

Both versions have four categories: Patient Care, Safety, Image Production and Procedures. Here are the eight sections inside them:

The 2022 column is for exams through February 28, 2027 and the 2027 column for exams from March 1, 2027. QA is quality assurance. By category, Patient Care goes from 33 to 31 questions, Safety from 50 to 46, Image Production stays at 51 and Procedures goes from 66 to 72. SI units (the International System of Units) are the main units of radiation measurement in both versions.

What the outline lists, in brief

The pages after the table break each section into topics. In the 2027 version:

• Patient care covers ethics and law, communication, patient transfer, emergencies, infection control and contrast media
• Radiation physics runs from X-ray production to photon interactions and the biological effects of radiation
• Radiation protection covers exposure factors, beam restriction and protecting staff with time, distance and shielding
• Image production covers technique charts, automatic exposure control, digital imaging, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and equipment quality control
• Each procedures section tests positioning, anatomy, adapting the procedure and judging the image, region by region

Each topic in the outline is linked to tasks in ARRT’s Task Inventory for Radiography, which lists the job duties of an entry-level radiographer. ARRT says the document isn’t a curriculum guide: programs teach more than the outline covers.