Glossary
Radiologist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential radiologist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key radiologist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in radiologist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ALARA
- Keep radiation as low as reasonably achievable.
- BI-RADS
- Breast imaging reporting categories.
- Contrast
- Dye that highlights structures.
- Critical result
- A finding needing urgent action.
- CT
- Computed tomography.
- Fluoroscopy
- Live X-ray imaging.
- Hounsfield unit
- CT density measure.
- Incidental finding
- An unexpected finding.
- Interventional radiology
- Image-guided procedures.
- Mammogram
- Breast X-ray.
- MRI
- Magnetic resonance imaging.
- Nuclear medicine
- Imaging with radioactive tracers.
- PACS
- Picture archiving and communication system.
- Protocol
- Settings for an imaging study.
- Teleradiology
- Reading images remotely.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Radiologist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Radiologist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.