February 2025;18(1):16 ABR Trustee Kalpana M. Kanal, PhD, recently earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Upstate New York Chapter of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. This award is given to an individual who has made lifelong and lasting contributions to medical physics. Dr. Kanal has worked in the department of radiology at…
February 2025;18(1):15 ABR Trustee Anne M. Covey, MD, has been elected as the RSNA Board Liaison for Public Information and Professionalism. An ABR volunteer since 2007, Dr. Covey is an interventional radiologist and professor of radiology in New York City at Weill Cornell Medical College and an attending radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,…
By Rodney Campbell, ABR Communications Manager February 2025;18(1):12 With two older sisters planning to go into medicine, young Katherine Tzou was looking for a separate career. “Because I’m the youngest and wanted to be different, I thought there was no way I was going into medicine,” she said. “I was going to be an oceanographer.” …
By Brent Wagner, MD, MBA, ABR Executive Director February 2025;18(1):3 When the ABR began offering remote exams in 2021, their development and implementation were based on the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are several practical advantages of remote exams for our candidates and diplomates; most importantly, enabling them to avoid the expense…
By Cheri L. Canon, MD, ABR President; Kinsey SmithWright, ABR Administrative and Exam Support Manager; and David Laszakovits, MBA, ABR Communications Director February 2025;18(1):2 The ABR has expanded communications with our candidates and diplomates over recent years, including blogs, The Beam (e-newsletter), and expanded content on our website. Our Board of Governors has emphasized the…
By John A. Kaufman, MD, MS, ABR President-elect; James B. Spies, MD, MPH, ABR Associate Executive Director for Interventional Radiology; and Brent Wagner, MD, MBA, ABR Executive Director February 2025;18(1):7 The Diagnostic Radiology Certifying Exam will be changing to an oral format in 2028. This past August, the ABR announced that it had retained a…
By Rodney Campbell, ABR Communications Manager February 2025;18(1):10 When he started at Rush Medical College in Chicago, Armaan Mazra, MS, had a goal: In 2025, he would be matching into a surgical residency, possibly orthopedic surgery. “I joined almost every surgical Interest group I could because I didn’t have a lot of perspective on medicine,…
By Matthew B. Podgorsak, PhD, ABR Board of Trustees Chair, and Brent Wagner, MD, MBA, ABR Executive Director February 2025;18(1):5 The ABR mission includes assessment of knowledge in the four radiologic disciplines (diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, medical physics, and radiation oncology). Various exam models are used by medical certifying boards; the ABR employs a multiple-choice…
By Kate Maturen, MD, ABR Trustee February 2025;18(1):6 In late 2024, I had the distinct honor of succeeding Stephen Simoneaux, MD, as vice chair for diagnostic radiology (DR) on the ABR Board of Trustees (BOT). An eminent pediatric radiologist and ABR volunteer of many decades, Steve will take his signature good humor and practical wisdom…
By Heather S. Hopkins, ABR Communications Coordinator February 2025;18(1):11 Lee F. Rogers, MD, died November 28, 2024, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 90. A musculoskeletal radiologist, Dr. Rogers was professor emeritus and former chair of radiology at Northwestern Medicine Feinberg School of Medicine. A lifelong educator, he led the Northwestern Department of Radiology…
By Kalpana M. Kanal, PhD, ABR Trustee February 2025;18(1):8 One of the key functions of ABR medical physics volunteers is to write questions for exams. This includes not only questions for medical physics exams, but also physics questions for exams given to candidates in the three other ABR disciplines: diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology/diagnostic radiology, and…
February 2025;18(1):4 In our last issue, we heard from the ABR Trustees who joined the Board in September 2024. This month, we asked new members of the ABR Board of Governors (BOG) to tell us about their experiences. Below are their answers to the following questions: James C. Anderson, MD Karen Ragland Cole, MD, MBA…
The ABR is a not-for-profit organization and member of the American Board of Medical Specialties. Our mission is to certify that our diplomates demonstrate the requisite knowledge, skill, and understanding of their disciplines to the benefit of patients. Our vision is to positively impact the lives of all patients as the foremost trusted certifying body assuring the highest standards of specialty expertise and professionalism in the radiological sciences.