FAQs

You have six years from the end of your training to complete the Initial Certification process (i.e., pass your qualifying and certifying exams). This is known as the board eligible period. If that time expires, you’ll need to complete an additional year of training at a program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) or the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) to re-enter the process.

Learn more about board eligibility.

ABR exams are created by volunteer content experts from a wide range of practice settings. Each question undergoes rigorous review for clarity, accuracy, and relevance before it’s used on an exam.

Questions are also statistically analyzed after the exam. If a question doesn’t perform as expected, a committee will review it. If necessary, the question is removed, and scores are recalculated before the results are finalized.

All ABR assessments are criterion-referenced. That means they’re scored based on a standard set before you take an exam, not on a curve. You’ll pass the exam if you meet or exceed the passing standard.

The pass/fail standard is set by subject-matter experts using established methods like the Angoff procedure.

Learn more about how exams are scored.

Sometimes age and sex are excluded from exam questions because the information is not relevant for understanding and answering the question. Removing this nonrelevant information helps you focus on what’s being tested.

The ABR carefully reviews scores for accuracy and fairness. Once posted, scores are final and not subject to change.

If you miss or cancel an exam after registering, paid exam fees will be applied to your next eligible exam.

If you register for an oral certifying exam and cancel more than five business days after registration closes or do not show for the exam appointment, you will be charged a $400 cancellation/no-show fee.

Certificates should arrive about four months after your exam results are posted. U.S. deliveries are sent via USPS, and international shipments are sent via UPS. This time frame accounts for finalizing personal details, processing high volumes, and working with our printer to ensure accuracy.

If you haven’t received your certificate after four months, contact us at 520-790-2900 or information@theabr.org.

Certificates are printed in a single batch to ensure quality control and proper tracking, so we cannot expedite individual orders.

• Name changes: Minor updates (e.g., adding a middle initial) can be made without documentation. We’ll need legal documentation for other changes, such as a court order, marriage certificate, or government-issued photo identification.
• Degree changes: To change your degree within the guidelines below, we’ll need a copy of your diploma or official transcript.

Degree change guidelines:

• For physicians: The ABR will print the doctorate/professional-level degree(s) that qualified you to begin the certification process.
• For medical physicists: The ABR will print only the highest degree that qualified you to get certified or that you earned.
• International credentials: MD or DO degrees will only be substituted for international degrees if you’ve earned it.
• Exclusion requests: You may request to omit a qualifying degree from your certificate.
• Including a PhD: If you earned a PhD, you may request to have it included.
• Postcertification degrees: We do not update existing certificates to add degrees earned after certification. You can

Please send all name or degree change requests to information@theabr.org.

If your certificate arrives damaged, contact us, and we’ll replace it at no charge. In the meantime, you may wish to have a notary make and notarize copies for credentialing purposes.

If you change your address after the deadline to update personal information has passed, contact us as soon as possible. We’ll do our best to update your shipping information before we send the certificate.

If the certificate has already shipped:

• Ensure that you have a forwarding order on file with USPS.
• If the certificate is returned to us, we’ll contact you for instructions on resending it.

There is a $100 fee for duplicate or replacement certificates. You can access the Certificate Request Form here and submit it by email.

You must participate in the Continuing Certification program to remain certified if you hold a continuous certificate (issued 2012 or later), or if you have a subspecialty certificate.

If you fail to meet the requirements in one or more of the four parts of Continuing Certification, your certification will no longer be maintained, and your status will be publicly reported as “no longer certified.”

Your Continuing Certification participation begins on January 1 of the year following your initial certification. Any Part 2 (Lifelong Learning) or Part 4 (Improvement in Medical Practice) work you complete after earning your certificate counts toward your Continuing Certification requirements.

Learn more about staying certified.

Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA) is an ongoing learning and assessment tool for diplomates participating in Continuing Certification. Participation begins in January of the year after initial certification and continues every year throughout your career.

OLA is one way to meet the Part 3 requirement of Continuing Certification. To maintain your certification, you must meet the Part 3 requirement for each maintained certificate every five years. This means either:

• Achieving a current cumulative OLA score that meets or exceeds the performance standard in year five of your five-year cycle.
• Passing a Continuing Certification Exam in year four or five.

Each certificate has its own five-year evaluation cycle and deadline — so not all diplomates have the same Part 3 evaluation deadline.

For diagnostic and interventional radiologists and those with only one DR subspecialty certificate, you can customize OLA to reflect your clinical practice. You can choose your practice areas in your OLA dashboard. For example, if you select general diagnostic radiology, your questions will come from areas like GI, GU, interventional, MSK, neuroradiology, nuclear, pediatrics, and thoracic.

Participation is required annually, and the platform is designed to be convenient, relevant, and supportive of your clinical work.

The ABR is not accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide CME.

All diplomates must complete 75 Category 1 CME credits over the previous three years.

You’ll receive two questions every Monday morning in your OLA dashboard (and be notified by email).

To meet OLA requirements, each year you must answer a minimum of:

• DR, DR and one subspeciality, IR/DR, or RO: 52 questions.
• DR and two or more subspecialities, or IR/DR and one subspecialty: 52 questions per certificate.
• MP: 52 questions per certificate.

If you don’t answer the required number of questions every year, remaining questions are called “forfeited questions,” and counted as incorrect. For example, if you’re required to answer 52 questions and only answer 50, the two unanswered questions will be considered “forfeited” and counted as incorrect.

Each question opportunity is available for four weeks.

Some questions allow three minutes, and others only allow one minute to answer. The timing depends on the complexity of the question, as determined by the volunteer committees. These committees consist of content experts who write, vet, and compile OLA questions.

You might see a question you’ve answered before. It’s common assessment practice to continue using well-performing questions.

However, you will not see the same question more than once every two years. Reusing proven questions speeds up scoring, since questions are already validated, and it allows us to be more efficient in developing new questions, while maintaining a robust pool.  

When you answer a question incorrectly, you will receive a similar question approximately three weeks later. We call this a variant. You can prepare for the variant by reviewing the incorrect question’s rationale and references.

Each question is rated individually, and each diplomate receives a different set of questions, so each person’s passing standard will vary slightly. Your OLA dashboard shows your performance against the passing standard well in advance of the Part 3 deadline, so you’ll know how you’re doing.

Once you’ve answered your required number of OLA questions, you have two options for the rest of the year:

1. Take a break: You may wait until the following year to resume answering questions, while continuing to meet your Part 1, 2, and 4 Continuing Certification requirements.
2. Keep going: You can answer more than 52 questions a year. Questions answered beyond the annual requirement can continue to count toward your current cumulative score. Correct answers may positively affect your score, whereas incorrect answers may negatively affect your score.

The annual progress requirement is the number of OLA questions that a diplomate needs to answer each year. For most, this is 52 questions per year, but it will vary depending on how many certificates you are maintaining. Not completing the annual progress requirement leads to forfeited questions.

To be deemed “scorable,” and therefore included in your current cumulative score, a question needs at least 50 diplomate responses, 10 question ratings, and acceptable psychometric statistics.

The OLA passing standard is criterion-referenced. That means OLA is not graded on a curve, nor do we compare your performance with that of your peers. Instead, you just need to meet the passing standard to pass OLA.

The passing standard for each OLA question is established individually and the aggregate rating for your most recent 200 questions defines your passing standard. The passing standard for each question is established by OLA participants who volunteer as question raters. This is an important characteristic of OLA: the radiology community sets the passing standard for each question.

Learn more about how the passing standard is set.

The passing standard for each question is established by OLA participants who volunteer as question raters. This is an important characteristic of OLA: the radiology community sets the passing standard for each question.

If you’ve answered more than 200 questions, your current cumulative score may go down even if you’re answering questions correctly. That’s because your current cumulative score is continuously being based on a different “set” of questions as you answer more questions.

Remember, your current cumulative score is based on the 200 scorable questions you answered most recently. For example, if you’ve answered 250 questions, your current cumulative score is likely represented by your performance on OLA questions 51 to 250. If you answer two more questions the following week, the next Monday your current cumulative score will likely be based on your performance on OLA questions 53 to 252.

We say “likely” because this assumes all the questions in that set were scorable. To be deemed “scorable,” and therefore included in your current cumulative score, a question needs at least 50 diplomate responses, 10 question ratings, and acceptable psychometric statistics.

If you’re below the passing standard after answering 52 scorable questions, your current cumulative score will be updated to show your current performance. However, your OLA performance will not impact your certificate until you reach your Part 3 deadline.

If you’re still below the passing standard in year four or year five before your Part 3 deadline elapses, you can choose to take the other option to meet your Part 3 requirement: the Continuing Certification Exam. We recommend contacting a certification manager at information@theabr.org or 520-790-2900 to discuss your OLA performance, when/how performance will impact your certificate, and steps that can be taken to remediate your performance.

The OLA experience is optimized for desktop computers, laptops, and tablets. For the best user experience, we recommend using a desktop or laptop computer with one of the following supported browsers:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Microsoft Edge
• Safari

Older web browsers can have problems with unexpected behavior; these issues are less common in modern web browsers. In general, the two most recent major releases of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari (on a rolling basis) are supported.

Preferred operating systems include the latest version of Windows, iOS, MacOS, and Android.

The ABR conducts regular audits to verify that diplomates are meeting Continuing Certification requirements.

There are several reasons you might be selected for an audit, including:

• Random selection: If you’re maintaining your certification through the ABR, you’re open to being audited. Being randomly selected is the most common reason for being audited.
• Regaining certification: If you were previously certified by the ABR and are regaining your certification, you may be audited sometime after you’ve regained your certification.

Anyone who has been maintaining their certification for at least three years with the ABR is open to being audited.

Audits focus on Part 2 (Lifelong Learning) and Part 4 (Improvement in Medical Practice). If audited, you’ll need to provide documentation for both parts for the last three years.

If you’re selected for an audit, you’ll have 60 days to submit required documentation for Part 2 (Lifelong Learning) and Part 4 (Improvement in Medical Practice) of Continuing Certification.

When selected, you’ll be notified by email, and receive instructions on how to upload and submit documents in myABR. You can only submit your documentation through myABR — we do not accept submissions via email, USPS mail, fax, or any other method.

If you’re already opted into the CME Gateway through RSNA or ASTRO, your credits should be imported automatically at the start of your audit.

If you’re not opted in, you can do so through the RSNA or ASTRO website. You’ll then need to submit a data pull request.

It usually takes at least a day or two for credits to appear in myABR after you’ve opted in and requested your data be imported in.

To check whether you’re opted in to the CME Gateway through RSNA or ASTRO:

• Log in to myABR.
• Select your profile in the top right corner.
• Select ‘CME Gateway’.

Credits will not update during the audit, so if something is missing, call us at (520) 790-2900 during business hours or email information@theabr.org.

Audits are only reviewed after you’ve submitted all your documentation.

If you upload some files and aren’t ready to submit all your documents yet, your progress will be saved in myABR until you return.

Once you’re ready to submit, select “Submit Audit for Review” in myABR. Submitting early is strongly encouraged. If there’s an issue with your documents, you’ll only be able to correct it if there’s still time remaining in your 60-day window.

If your documentation is incomplete or incorrect, you’ll be found noncompliant. You’ll receive a second and final 60-day audit window to correct this.

If you remain noncompliant at the end of the second audit period, maintenance will be ended for all of your certificates. If you have a Continuous Certificate, it’ll be listed as ‘no longer certified’.

To regain certification, you’ll need to reenter the certification process, which includes passing a Continuing Certification exam.

All audits are reviewed carefully by ABR staff. Once a decision is made, it’s final and not subject to appeal.

You can log in to myABR any time to check:

• The status of your audit.
• Submission deadline.
• Feedback or requests from auditors for additional documentation.

We encourage you to regularly check myABR for updates during the audit process.

You can view your current Continuing Certification status and certificate information anytime in myABR. You’re responsible for monitoring your progress.

If selected for an audit, you’ll need to submit documentation for CME (Part 2) and PQI (Part 4) to the ABR, so you should keep documents in case.

If your certificate lapses due to unmet requirements, you can no longer claim ABR certification or diplomate status.

If you have multiple continuous certificates, you pay one annual fee, and Parts 1, 2, and 4 of your participation requirements will not double.

For Part 3, if you choose to meet your requirements through OLA, content will be assigned for each certificate you’re maintaining. Or, if you choose to take the Continuing Certification exam, you’ll select the certificates you wish to maintain when you register for an exam, and content will be assigned in the exam for the selected certificates.

If you have a restriction placed on any medical license, you must notify the ABR within 60 days. Serious actions — such as license revocation, suspension, or surrender — may result in certificate revocation. Read our Professional Standing Policy for more information.

If you no longer wish to participate in Continuing Certification, you can opt out through the self-service End Maintenance process in myABR. Your certificate will no longer be maintained or publicly reported as certified unless it is a lifetime certificate.

If you hold only a lifetime certificate, you’re not required to participate in Continuing Certification. However, participation is encouraged to demonstrate lifelong learning and meet potential state or payer expectations.

If you hold a lifetime certificate and a continuous subspecialty certificate, you’ll need to maintain your continuous certificate.

As a lifetime certificate holder, you can voluntarily enroll in the Continuing Certification program in myABR. To begin, complete the enrollment steps, which may include passing an exam. If it’s your first time using myABR, please have your ABR ID number available to set up your account.

Your participation status will change when you enroll, but your lifetime certification remains valid whether or not you maintain participation. If you don’t meet Continuing Certification requirements, you’ll no longer be listed as “maintained” or “participating,” but your certificate will still show as certified.

If you’re moving states and are required to pass an exam for licensure, you can register via myABR for the next available Continuing Certification Exam. Passing this exam will fulfill those external requirements.

You can begin exploring OLA questions as soon as you enroll in Continuing Certification, but your official OLA requirements will start in January of the year following your enrollment.

The ABR no longer includes the following NRC-related eligibility designations on certificates issued after December 31, 2023:

• Authorized User-Eligible (AU-E)
• Authorized Medical Physicist-Eligible (AMP-Eligible)
• Radiation Safety Officer-Eligible (RSO-Eligible)

If you received initial certification before that date and met the criteria (such as passing the Radioisotope Safety Content), the relevant eligibility (AU-E, AMP-Eligible, or RSO-Eligible) was noted on your certificate.

The decision to discontinue these designations was based on several factors:

• Maintaining the designation diverted resources from key priorities like exam development and candidate support.
• These designations fall outside the ABR’s core mission of certification.
• Direct pathways to AU, AMP, or RSO status are available through the NRC and Agreement States, without the need for board certification.

In short, you can become an AU, AMP, or RSO without being ABR certified — and being ABR certified does not automatically make you one.

All ABR specialties that previously included these designations are affected:

• AU-Eligible: Diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology/diagnostic radiology, radiation oncology
• RSO-Eligible: Diagnostic medical physics, nuclear medical physics
• AMP-Eligible: Therapeutic medical physics

These eligibility markers do not appear on certificates issued after December 31, 2023.

RISC is still included in the Qualifying (Core) and Certifying exams for diagnostic radiology and interventional radiology/diagnostic radiology. While it was once scored separately as the Radioisotope Safety Exam (RISE), since 2024, it’s been integrated into the overall exam score.

• The ACGME still requires 700 hours of training in nuclear radiology for diagnostic radiology and interventional radiology/diagnostic radiology residents.
• The ABR no longer collects NRC-related documentation, but programs and residents are encouraged to retain it for NRC purposes.
• Graduates seeking AU status may ask their programs to complete the NRC Preceptor Statement, which includes similar information to what the ABR previously collected.

Documentation requirements remain in place for candidates pursuing the 16-month nuclear radiology pathway or a nuclear radiology/nuclear medicine fellowship. This documentation is used only to determine eligibility for the Nuclear Radiology Subspecialty Exam, not for AU-E designation.

As a diagnostic radiologist, you can still interpret nuclear radiology/nuclear medicine studies without being an AU, if you’ve been granted practice privileges to do so by your institution.

You can verify whether a radiologist, interventional radiologist, radiation oncologist, or medical physicist is certified by using the free, online verification tool. The information is accurate, regularly updated, and considered primary source verification.

Once you’ve located an individual using the verification tool, you can print an official ABR watermarked letter showing their certification status — free of charge. Just select the “View/Print” icon in the gray box on the results page.

You can request formal ABR documentation if you need a more formalized letter or replacement certificate.

The ABR does not offer referrals or personal background information. We only verify whether an individual is ABR certified and in which specialty or subspecialty. If someone is still in the certification process, we’ll also include this information in the verification result.

The ABR does not share or sell mailing lists. All personal data in our records is kept confidential.