A gift, with love
You picked this.
Most people back into a healthcare job because it’s stable. You’re walking toward this one because something in you has wanted it for years. This tool is the conversation I wish someone had with me before my first clinical day — plus a database you can come back to for the next four years and beyond.
How to use this
Two halves. The orientation pages (Start Here, the Agenda, the Hidden Curriculum, Habits) are the wisdom — read them now, re-read when a semester gets hard. The database pages (Positioning Atlas, ARRT, Competency Tracker, Glossary, Sites, Specializations) are the reference — you don’t read them through; you query them when you need an answer.
- Search anything with the bar at the top (or press /). It covers every projection, term, hospital, and specialization in here.
- Check things off in the Competency Tracker, the Agenda, and the First 30 Days — your progress saves in this browser automatically.
- The companion PDF (The Long Look) is the readable letter version of the orientation pages.
Program
70.5 cr
SUNY Broome A.A.S. · 21 months · JRCERT-accredited (8-yr award)
Clinical
900 hrs
+50 service hours · 3 hospital sites · starts semester one
The goal
ARRT-R
230-question registry · pass = scaled 75 · ~79% program pass rate
The whole job, in one sentence
The patient on your table does not need you to be perfect. They need you to be present, careful, and kind — and to make a good image so a doctor can help them. Everything else in this tool is just in service of that.
What this is and isn’t. A study & orientation companion — not a substitute for your program’s official protocols, your clinical instructors, or the current ARRT/JRCERT documents. Positioning routines and competency designations vary by department and textbook (Merrill’s, Bontrager). When this tool and your program disagree, your program wins. Verify load-bearing facts on the Sources page.
The map
The 4-Year Agenda
It’s actually two years of program (after prerequisites/admission). Here is the real SUNY Broome course sequence, term by term, with the one thing to own in each — not just pass. Check off terms as you finish them.
Before you start: getting in
The program is competitive admission. The committee scores your math & science grades plus GPA for limited seats. Hard floor: below a 74 (HS) / C (college) in a required prerequisite is an automatic disqualification. Health-science applications for a Fall start are typically due February 1; top applicants get early offers in mid-February. There is also a 50-hour service-learning / volunteer requirement completed before clinical courses — do it early, and treat it as your first audition.
Not independently confirmed: the exact named prerequisite courses and whether a numeric points rubric exists. Get the official Competitive Admissions Requirements sheet from the program and follow it exactly.
Your progress through the sequence
0 / 5 termsThe database you’ll use most
Positioning Atlas
A searchable quick-reference for routine projections: patient position, central ray, evaluation criteria, and a registry pearl for each. Use it to build your “one projection a day” deck. Tap any row to expand.
Read me first. Routines, angles, and CR centering vary by department and textbook. These are common, standard values for study — always follow your program’s protocols and your clinical instructor. This atlas is a memory aid, not a protocol manual.
What the registry actually tests
The ARRT Radiography Exam
Computer-based, 230 questions (200 scored + 30 unscored pilot), pass = a scaled score of 75. Here is exactly what it weights — and where every program over-teaches.
Content weighting (current specs, effective Jan 2022)
| Category | Scored Qs | Weight | What it really is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Procedures | 66 | 33% | Positioning & anatomy: head/spine/pelvis, thorax/abdomen, extremities |
| Image Production | 51 | 25.5% | Image acquisition & evaluation, equipment, QA |
| Safety | 50 | 25% | Radiation physics, radiobiology, radiation protection |
| Patient Care | 33 | 16.5% | Patient interaction & management |
| Total scored | 200 | 100% | +30 unscored pilot questions = 230 total |
The insight most students miss
Procedures + Image Production = 58.5% of the entire exam. That is positioning, anatomy, and producing a diagnostic image — the stuff you do with your hands every clinical day. Meanwhile everyone white-knuckles physics & radiobiology, which lives inside the 25% Safety slice (much of it practical radiation protection, not theory). Don’t coast on positioning to cram physics. Treat every clinical exam as a registry question.
Eligibility, in plain terms
- Degree: an associate degree or higher — it need not be the rad-tech degree, but must be earned before you take the exam.
- Education: complete the ARRT-approved program and its didactic + clinical competency requirements.
- Ethics: comply with ARRT’s Standards of Ethics and answer the ethics questions (disclosure of convictions / disciplinary actions). A pre-application review is available if you have a potential issue.
⚠ A change that lands inside your four years
ARRT’s documents update effective March 1, 2027. If you certify in spring 2027 or later you may test under the new version, which:
- Moves imaging procedures to 35 mandatory / 17 elective (from 36 / 15).
- Replaces the CPR requirement with BLS or ACLS; removes standalone vital-signs and venipuncture.
- On the written side, removes all Computed Radiography (CR) content; adds virtual grids, teleradiography, and data security/confidentiality.
In Year 2, ask your program director directly: “Am I testing under the 2022 or the 2027 specs?” It changes which competencies you must document. (ARRT didn’t publish new per-category question counts, so don’t assume the 33/50/51/66 weighting carries over unchanged.)
Your eligibility checklist
Competency Tracker
To sit for the registry you must document a set of competencies. Track them here — progress saves in this browser. The 10 general patient-care procedures below are the current ARRT-verified list. The imaging procedures are a practical study checklist grouped by region.
Authoritative source = your program. Exact mandatory-vs-elective designations are set by ARRT and your program’s official competency form. Use this to track and study, then confirm every sign-off against that form. Current structure (2022): 10 patient-care + 36 mandatory imaging + 15 electives from 34 (≥1 Head, ≥2 Fluoroscopy), up to 10 simulated.
General Patient Care ARRT-verified · 10 required
Imaging Procedures study checklist
The half of the job that isn’t the machine
Patient Care & Radiation Safety
Patient Care is “only” 16.5% of the written exam, but on the floor it’s most of the work — and radiation protection is the reflex that defines you. Here’s the working core.
Radiation protection — make it reflex
- ALARA — As Low As Reasonably Achievable. The whole philosophy in one word.
- The three pillars: Time (less exposure time), Distance (inverse-square law — double the distance, quarter the dose), Shielding (lead between source and what you’re protecting).
- Collimate to the anatomy — tighter field = less patient dose and better image (less scatter).
- Optimal kVp + minimal mAs for a diagnostic image; use AEC correctly.
- Protect yourself: never hold patients if avoidable; stand at 90° to the patient/scatter; wear your lead and your dosimeter.
- The 10-day / pregnancy rule — always ask about possible pregnancy; know your department’s policy.
Build the reflex on the boring exams — collimate and shield before you consciously decide to — so it’s already automatic when the trauma rolls in. You don’t retrofit a reflex later.
Patient communication — the actual skill
- Introduce, verify, explain. Name + DOB (two identifiers), then tell them what you’re about to do, every time.
- The time-out: right patient, right exam, right side. Wrong-side / wrong-patient errors are career events.
- Talk a scared patient through it — the trauma patient can’t hold position without trusting your voice. Steal one good sentence a week from the best communicator on the floor.
- Special populations: peds (get on their level, make it a game, immobilize kindly), geriatric (slow down, mind skin/fragility), trauma (bring the tube to the patient, don’t force position).
Quick clinical vitals & care reference
| Vital / item | Normal adult range (know your facility’s values) |
|---|---|
| Heart rate (pulse) | 60–100 bpm |
| Respiratory rate | 12–20 breaths/min |
| Blood pressure | ~120/80 mmHg (hypertension ≥130/80) |
| Oxygen saturation (SpO₂) | 95–100% |
| Body temperature | ~97–99°F (36.1–37.2°C) |
Vital-sign assessment and venipuncture are current ARRT competencies (changing in the 2027 documents). Practice them until they’re calm and routine, not nervous.
Decode the language
Glossary & Anatomy Landmarks
The abbreviations, terms, and surface landmarks that everyone around you will use as if you already know them. Search or browse. The landmarks are the ones you’ll center to — learn to feel for them with your eyes closed.
Where you’ll train — and likely get hired
Clinical Sites (Southern Tier)
SUNY Broome rotates students through ~3 main hospitals (~300 hours each) plus orthopedic and outpatient affiliates, all within about an hour of campus. These are the named affiliates from the program’s current clinical manual.
Heads-up: the Binghamton “Lourdes” is now Guthrie Lourdes (formerly Ascension Lourdes) — your paperwork will say Guthrie. Not confirmed as an affiliate: Guthrie’s Sayre / Robert Packer campus (the current manual names Guthrie Cortland and Guthrie Lourdes).
Where this credential can take you
Specializations after the A.A.S.
Radiography is the trunk. From the ARRT-R credential you can branch into nearly every modality — most via post-primary ARRT certification earned after you’re working, through structured clinical experience plus an exam. Start sensing which one fits you from semester one.
The student move
Year-1 Summer’s Imaging Modalities course and your Modalities / OR / Cath Lab / Interventional rotations are free test-drives. Notice what energizes you and what drains you — that’s real data about your next decade. Then aim your first job at a hospital strong in the thing you want to grow into; cross-training happens from the inside.
The honest version
AI in Radiology — what a tech actually needs to know
You’ll hear “AI will replace radiology” and “AI is all hype.” Both are wrong. Here’s what’s real, verified against recent sources — and what it means for you, the person who acquires the images.
It’s real, and radiology is the epicenter
There are well over 1,000 FDA-authorized AI-enabled medical devices, ~75–77% of them in radiology — by far the most AI-saturated specialty in medicine. But almost all the AI that touches a technologist’s day is the unglamorous kind that lives in the equipment, not the “AI reads the scan” headline kind:
- Deep-learning reconstruction (GE AIR Recon DL, Siemens Deep Resolve, Canon AiCE) — standard now; cuts MRI times up to ~50% and CT dose up to ~70% while preserving quality. Faster scans, lower dose, less motion.
- AI auto-positioning cameras on CT (Siemens FAST 3D) — center patients more accurately than by hand. Reduces the grunt of centering; doesn’t replace knowing what a diagnostic image is.
- Triage / worklist AI (Aidoc, 1,000+ hospitals; Viz.ai, 1,700+) — flags stroke / PE / pneumothorax off your images to speed the radiologist.
- QA flags at the modality — catch positioning errors and motion before the patient leaves.
- Mammography AI — the MASAI trial (>100,000 women, The Lancet, Jan 2026) found AI-supported reading caught more cancers (81% vs 74%) with unchanged false positives and a 44% cut in radiologist reading workload.
What’s hype
Autonomous scan-reading or replacing anyone. Today’s AI is narrow (one finding, one modality) and brittle (a model trained at one hospital can falter at another). The documented risk isn’t unemployment — it’s automation bias, over-trusting a flag that’s wrong.
Your job outlook
BLS projects radiologic and MRI technologists growing ~5% (2024–2034), ~15,400 openings a year, driven by an aging population — and does not list AI as a threat. ASRT and the professional bodies frame AI as augmentation, not replacement.
The truth to tattoo on the inside of your skull: the AI depends on you. Triage, detection, reconstruction — all of it only works on a diagnostic-quality image. Garbage in, garbage out. You are the human who guarantees the input the entire AI stack is built on. AI removes tasks, not responsibility. The tech who understands what AI does, where it fails, and that she guards its data is more valuable in the AI era, not less.
Do it on your real rotation
- On AI-equipped gear, ask: “What does this flag, and how often is it wrong?”
- Never let an AI flag replace your own read of image quality. Own the input.
- Lean toward modalities where you’re the irreplaceable human (CT, MRI, IR, mammo).
What compounds over a career
Habits & The First 30 Days
Careers are made by small habits repeated 10,000 times. Start these in week one and they become who you are instead of what you’re trying to remember.
The eight compounding habits
- Read every image you take. The master habit — builds your eye, studies for the registry, catches the repeat before the radiologist does.
- Collimate and shield as reflex, every time.
- Own your mistakes out loud, instantly.
- Learn one person’s name a day — techs, transporters, nurses, patients.
- Find the work in the lulls.
- Take the hard patient. Reps on hard patients are worth ten on easy ones.
- Be kind when no one’s grading you.
- Protect your body. Lift right; the techs still working at 60 respected ergonomics at 20.
The first 30 days
Hold onto this for the hard semesters
There will be nights when the physics won’t click, when an image gets rejected, when a CI is short with you and you wonder if you’re cut out for this. On those nights: you’ve wanted this since forever. The wanting was never the question. Now you get to go and become it — one patient, one clean image, one good habit at a time. You already have everything it takes; the next four years are just where you find that out.
Show the receipts
Sources & Honesty
Load-bearing facts in this tool were verified against primary sources in June 2026. Here’s where they came from — and what couldn’t be fully confirmed, marked plainly rather than dressed up as fact.
Primary sources
- SUNY Broome program, sequence, clinical model, sites, outcomes — the college’s own program & admissions pages, its 2025–2027 Clinical Education & Program Manuals, the catalog degree planner, and the JRCERT program directory (8-year award, outcomes data).
- ARRT exam content & eligibility — ARRT’s current (2022-effective) Radiography Content Specifications and Didactic & Clinical Competency Requirements PDFs, plus its exam-scoring and primary-eligibility pages. The March 1, 2027 document change is from ARRT’s 2025–2026 update announcements.
- AI in radiology — FDA AI-device tallies (The Imaging Wire, Dec 2025), vendor & peer-reviewed reconstruction/positioning sources, the MASAI mammography trial (The Lancet, Jan 2026), the U.S. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, and ASRT statements.
- Positioning atlas & glossary — standard radiographic positioning conventions (Merrill’s / Bontrager tradition). A study aid; defer to your program’s protocols.
Could not be fully confirmed (treat as best read, verify locally)
- The exact named prerequisite courses and whether a numeric admissions-points rubric exists.
- Guthrie Sayre / Robert Packer as a clinical affiliate (manual names Cortland & Lourdes).
- Exact registry exam time in minutes (sources disagree; confirm in the current ARRT handbook).
- Whether the 2027 specs keep the same per-category question weighting (ARRT listed topic edits, not new counts).
- Slight differences in published pass/placement/completion fractions across snapshots — read as “strong, benchmark-beating,” not to a decimal.
- Exact ARRT mandatory-vs-elective designation per imaging procedure — confirm against your program’s official competency form.
When this tool and your program, your CI, or a current ARRT/JRCERT document disagree, they are right and this is out of date. Re-verify anything load-bearing before you rely on it.
Make it yours
My Notebook
Every note you write and every section you bookmark across this tool collects here. It saves automatically in this browser. Use Export to download a backup file you can keep or carry to another computer.
★ Bookmarked sections
✎ My section notes
📝 Scratchpad
A free space for anything — questions to ask your CI, comps to chase, registry weak spots, a win from today.
Saved
Your notes, checkmarks, and bookmarks live in this browser’s storage — they persist across sessions on this computer, but clearing browser data (or opening the file on a different device) starts fresh. Hit Export now and then to keep a real backup file you own.