1.1 Current Exam Facts

Who awards the credential

The American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT) is the certifying body. Cardiac-Interventional Radiography is a postprimary credential: you already hold Radiography, then you add Cardiac Interventional. After you pass, the credential is listed as R.T.(R)(CI)(ARRT) — Registered Technologist in Radiography and Cardiac Interventional Radiography with ARRT. That string is not decoration. Employers, privileging offices, and state license boards look for the CI postnominal when they staff a catheterization laboratory (cath lab).

The exam you will sit in 2026 is still the outline ARRT published after its last CI practice analysis. The Examination Content Specifications were Board approved in July 2022 and implemented July 1, 2023. ARRT's content-specification index has not replaced that CI document. If a review book, blog, or even an older OpenExamPrep exam-meta table still shows 24 / 24 / 52 topic weights, treat those numbers as stale. The live scored blueprint is 40 Patient Care / 20 Image Production / 85 Procedures.

Item count, clock, and appointment

The CI form contains 145 scored items plus 40 unscored (pilot) items, for 185 total items (CI_CS_2023 footnote 2; 2026 Postprimary Eligibility Pathway Handbook, p. 46). You cannot tell which items are pilots. They are written in the same style, mixed into the same random order, and they look like scored questions. Answer every item as if it counts.

Test time is 195 minutes. ARRT also budgets time around the scored clock:

Plan your shift coverage around 215 minutes at the center, plus the instruction to arrive 30 minutes early. If you arrive 15 minutes or more after the scheduled start, Pearson may forfeit the appointment. ARRT will not refund the fee; a late arrival does not count as one of your three attempts, but you must reapply and pay again.

Question formats and pacing

Most items are one-best-answer multiple choice. Some items ask you to select more than one answer, put steps in order, click a hot-spot on an image, or watch a short video and then answer. Items appear in random order — you will not get a Patient Care block, then Image Production, then Procedures. A Gorlin valve-area calculation can sit next to a sterile-field item.

You must answer the current item before the software lets you advance. If you are unsure, guess, flag the item, and keep moving. ARRT scores the number of correct answers; blank items cannot help you. A working pacing target is about one minute per item (185 items, 195 minutes). Do not spend four minutes on a shunt formula while 20 interventional items sit unseen.

Exam trap: because questions are randomized, a string of unfamiliar electrophysiology (EP) items does not mean you are failing. The next screen may be a radial-access Barbeau test you see every day. Flag, guess, move.

How the score actually works

Passing is a scaled score of 75 on a 1–99 scale. That 75 is not a percentage. ARRT uses scaled scoring so a slightly harder form does not punish you and a slightly easier form does not gift a pass. The raw number of correct answers needed for 75 changes with form difficulty. Do not convert 75% of 145 and decide you need 109 scored hits. That arithmetic is not ARRT's rule.

After the total is scaled, ARRT also reports section scores from 0.1 to 9.9 in one-tenth intervals. A section score near 8.1 is roughly analogous to a total scaled score of 81 if that section had been the whole exam, but section scores do not average to the total. Procedures has 85 scored items; Image Production has 20. Averaging a 9.0 in Image Production with a 6.5 in Procedures will not describe your total. Use section scores only to see relative strength if you must retest.

You will see a preliminary scaled score on the monitor when you finish. That number is not official. Official results post to your ARRT account in about 10 business days. Do not post the preliminary number on social media or treat it as a credential.

ARRT does not publish a current CI-specific pass rate on the candidate-facing exam pages. Do not memorize a rumor percentage from a Facebook group or a third-party vendor. Study the outline; do not study a made-up pass rate.

Pearson VUE, IDs, and the two-minute NDA

Testing is in-person at Pearson VUE — not remote, not at your hospital. Bring two forms of identification whose names match ARRT records. Staff will capture a digital signature, photograph, and palm-vein scan. Personal items, phones, notes, and your own calculator stay in a locker. Pearson can provide a basic four-function calculator; the computer also has basic and scientific calculators. Use the 8-minute tutorial to click those calculators before the NDA appears.

Exam trap — the NDA timer. After the tutorial there is a short delay, then a nondisclosure agreement appears with a two-minute countdown. If you do not accept within two minutes, Pearson ends the exam. That event does not count as an attempt under the three-attempts-in-three-years rule, but the fee is forfeited and you must reapply. Do not start writing on the note board until after you accept the NDA.

Fees, attempts, and keeping the credential

You have three exam attempts in three years from the first assigned exam window. After three failures or after the three-year window closes, you must requalify (repeat structured education and clinical experience — covered in the next section).

Once certified, you renew every year for $65 and complete 24 Category A continuing education (CE) credits every two years. Adding CI does not add a second $65; the renewal fee is per person, not per credential. You must also keep the supporting Radiography credential active.

Official scored blueprint (145 items)

Weights: 40/145 = 27.6%, 20/145 = 13.8%, 85/145 = 58.6%. Interventional alone (50/145) is 34.5% of the exam — larger than Patient Care. A study plan that spends equal weeks on fluoroscopy physics and on percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is misaligned with the scored table.

Cath-lab scenario. You just finished a primary PCI at 02:00 and your Pearson appointment is 08:00. The appointment is 3 hours 35 minutes plus a 30-minute early arrival. That is a four-hour block after a night STEMI. Sleep, two IDs, and a printed or phone copy of your Candidate Status Report matter more at that hour than rereading a textbook chapter in the parking lot.

OpenExamPrep offers free CI practice questions at /practice/arrt-cardiac-interventional. Use them as a study aid to rehearse item styles and weak topics. They are not official ARRT items, not a mock registry, and not endorsed by ARRT. ARRT does not recommend commercial review products; the official study map is the Examination Content Specifications on arrt.org.