ABR Core Exam Map
- The ABR Core Exam is the big organized-by-domain checkpoint near the end of radiology residency — and this page is a map from those domains back into this site.
- It's organized by organ systems plus a handful of cross-cutting domains (physics, safety, and non-interpretive skills), not by "easy to hard."
- Physics, radioisotope safety (RISC), and non-interpretive skills (NIS) are their own scored chunks — people who only study pictures get surprised by them.
- Use this as a coverage map: find a domain, click into the matching part of the site, and check it off.
Somewhere in residency there's a single exam that tries to ask you about everything — the brain, the bowel, the half-life of a radiotracer, and the correct way to disclose an error to a patient, all in one sitting. That's the American Board of Radiology (ABR) Core Exam. It feels less like a test and more like someone emptied an entire radiology library onto your desk and said "good luck." This page is the card catalog: it tells you which shelf each topic lives on so you can actually find things.
How the exam is shaped (the honest version)
The Core Exam is built around domains — chunks of content that roughly follow the organ systems, with a few cross-cutting categories bolted on. Think of it like a grocery store laid out by aisle: most aisles are organs (chest, GI, neuro), but a few aisles are the boring-but-essential stuff you can't skip, like physics and safety.
The exact number of questions and the pass mark shift over time, and the ABR is the only source of truth for the current blueprint — so I won't quote a specific count and risk being wrong. The structure, though, is stable enough to map.
The single most common way people underestimate this exam is treating physics, RISC (radioisotope safety — the rules for handling radioactive materials), and NIS (non-interpretive skills) as afterthoughts. They're scored content. A beautiful eye for a subtle fracture won't save you if you can't explain ALARA.
The domain map
Here's the crosswalk. Left column is roughly how the ABR carves up the world; right column is where that content lives on this site. (One exam domain often maps to several systems here, and that's fine — the map is for finding things, not a one-to-one promise.)
| ABR Core domain (approx.) | Where it lives here |
|---|---|
| Physics | Imaging Physics — production, attenuation, CT, MRI, ultrasound, artifacts |
| Safety / RISC | Radiation Safety & Protection plus MRI Safety |
| Neuroradiology | Neuroradiology and Head & Neck |
| Thoracic | Thoracic / Chest |
| Cardiac | Cardiac Imaging |
| Gastrointestinal | GI & Abdominal |
| Genitourinary | Genitourinary |
| Reproductive / OB-GYN | OB-GYN |
| Breast | Breast Imaging |
| Musculoskeletal | Musculoskeletal |
| Vascular | Vascular Imaging and Interventional Radiology |
| Ultrasound | Ultrasound (cross-cutting — also woven through each system) |
| Nuclear / molecular | Nuclear Medicine & PET |
| Pediatric | Pediatric Radiology |
| Non-interpretive skills (NIS) | Quality & Safety, Informatics & AI, Statistics & Evidence, and Professionalism |
The cross-cutting domains people forget
A few categories don't belong to any one organ, so they hide in plain sight.
Physics and safety show up everywhere — the same attenuation concept that explains a chest X-ray also explains your CT dose. Study them once, properly, and they pay rent across the whole exam.
Non-interpretive skills (NIS) is the grab-bag of "things a radiologist does besides stare at images": quality improvement, error and discrepancy, informatics, statistics, ethics, and how you communicate a critical result without ruining someone's afternoon. It feels unglamorous. It's also low-hanging fruit, because it rewards reading rather than years of pattern recognition.
The cross-cutting domains are where preparation has the best return on effort. A subtle MSK call takes years of cases to nail; the definition of positive predictive value takes an afternoon. Don't leave the easy points on the table.
How to actually use this map
Treat it like a packing list before a long trip. Go domain by domain, click into the matching system, and ask one question: can I confidently approach this, name the don't-miss findings, and avoid the classic mimics? If yes, check it off. If you flinch, that's your study target.
Don't confuse "I've seen these cases at work" with "I've covered this domain." The exam samples breadth — including topics your particular rotations may have skipped (looking at you, nuclear medicine half-lives and breast calcification morphology). The map exists to catch those blind spots.
If you remember one thing: the Core Exam isn't testing whether you're a finished radiologist — it's testing whether you've touched every shelf in the library. This page just tells you where the shelves are.