Credential
ARRT certification (radiologic technologist)
The national certification behind almost every medical imaging job in the United States — and one of the few where the issuing body publishes how many people hold it, so the gap against employment can actually be seen.
No cost figure. Nobody publishes one for this that we could verify, so we show none rather than an estimate.
No single training length. What it takes is set state by state or programme by programme; the note below says what we could establish.
No payback period, because there is no cost figure to pay back. The pay premium is below; the cash outlay is the half we could not source.
Why there is no cost figure here
No cost figure appears here because we could not source one honestly. Federal programme-level data is published at four-digit CIP granularity, and radiography sits inside CIP 51.09 together with respiratory therapy, surgical technology and several other allied-health programmes. Publishing that blended figure as the cost of a radiography education would be a number about something else wearing this page's label, so there is none.
ARRT requires an accredited educational programme, which for the radiography pathway means an associate degree or higher — normally two years full time — plus documented clinical competencies and a national exam.
Certification renews annually and requires 24 hours of continuing education every two years.
How many people hold this, and how many are working in the field
The number the pay figure leaves out
Of the 371,444 people holding at least one ARRT credential counted in 2026, federal employment records account for 308,030 working in the occupations it is for — 82.9%. That leaves 63,414 holders it does not account for.
That gap is an upper bound, not an unemployment rate. Holding a credential is not the same as looking for work with it. The gap contains everyone who moved into management, teaching, sales, inspection or a related job that federal data files under a different occupation; everyone who retired or left without surrendering the credential; everyone working part time, agency or self-employed in a way the employment survey does not capture; and everyone holding it as a second string to another job. So the gap is the CEILING on how many trained people are not working in this field — the real figure is lower, and it is not a count of anyone who is unemployed. What the pair does establish is the size of the pool the published pay figure is silent about, which is the thing no pay site shows you.
Both sides are standing counts. The credential figure is a stock — everyone holding it on the date it was counted — and the employment figure is a stock too, everyone employed in the reference period. They are the same kind of quantity, which is the only reason the two may be divided at all.
What that count includes: Individuals — not credentials. ARRT publishes both: 371,444 people between them hold 588,615 credentials, because a technologist commonly certifies in more than one modality. 341,659 of them hold the radiography credential. The count includes holders outside the 50 states (Canada 708, other countries 259, military addresses 167); the US states-only subtotal is 369,872. It counts everyone whose credential is current, including people who have stopped working but keep renewing.
Denominator: people holding at least one ARRT credential = 371,444 (Standing count of people holding the credential, ARRT census, last updated July 2026) · ARRT, Credential Statistics by Location and Discipline census · view
The four occupations below are the ones ARRT credentials are for. Some holders work as diagnostic medical sonographers, imaging managers, educators or equipment applications specialists, all of which federal data files elsewhere — which is part of why the unaccounted-for figure is a ceiling rather than a measurement.
What it lets you do
The pay belongs to the job, not to the credential. These are the occupations this qualifies you for, with what BLS records people already doing them earn.
| Job | Is it required? | Median | Employed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radiologic Technologists and Technicians | Legally required to hold the job | $80,110 | 230,490 |
| Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists ARRT is one of two routes into MRI; ARDMS certifies the other. |
Not legally required, but the usual route | $95,480 | 43,390 |
| Nuclear Medicine Technologists ARRT and the NMTCB both certify this work. |
Not legally required, but the usual route | $101,370 | 17,080 |
| Radiation Therapists | Legally required to hold the job | $105,310 | 17,070 |
Median pay and employment: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
Does it pay for itself?
The job this unlocks pays a median of $80,110, against an employment-weighted median of $50,020 across every occupation we publish — a premium of about $30,090 a year before tax. We cannot turn that into a payback period, because no credible figure exists for what this costs to obtain. Half of the calculation is real and published; the other half we do not have, and we would rather show one honest half than two invented ones.
Read that as a comparison to an average job, not to your job. We do not know what you earn now, so we do not use it. The baseline is the employment-weighted median across all the occupations on this site — the midpoint American worker. If you already earn more than that, the payback is longer than shown; if you earn less, shorter. The figure also ignores the months of training, during which most people earn less or nothing, and it ignores interest on anything borrowed.
And it assumes you get the job. Every payback figure on this site is conditional on being hired into the work. That is the assumption the credential-holder count above exists to test, and it is the assumption every other pay site makes silently.
What you need before you start
- An ARRT-recognised educational programme
- Documented clinical competency requirements
- An ethics review — ARRT screens convictions individually
Do not do this if
- you are not prepared to keep certifying — most technologists add modalities over a career, and each is another exam
- you cannot meet the clinical-competency requirements, which need a placement, not just coursework
All credentials, by payback period · How this is calculated · Look up something else