Demand for medical imaging in the U.S. keeps rising, but the number of radiologists available to read those images has barely budged relative to the population, according to a new research study published in the JACR®.
The researchers tracked the radiologist pipeline over roughly the past 15 years using four national datasets covering the residency match, accredited training programs, graduate medical education, and the practicing physician workforce. They found that radiology residency positions grew 33% between 2010 and 2025, and the total number of radiology residents grew 23% through 2024. Yet the number of radiologists actually in practice rose only 12% between 2010 and 2022, translating to a shift from 11.1 to 11.5 radiologists per 100,000 people.
According to the authors, radiology also expanded more slowly than medicine as a whole: positions grew 66% across the specialty from 2002 to 2025, compared with 89% across all specialties. According to Ajay Malhotra, MBBS, MD, MMM, Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Neurology and of Neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine, more trainees are entering radiology, but attrition and population growth are absorbing nearly all of that gain, and the aging of the population means per capita imaging demand is climbing at the same time.
"The radiologist pipeline has grown, but almost none of that growth has reached patients," said Malhotra. "After accounting for population growth, the number of radiologists per person is essentially where it was fifteen years ago, and that is before you factor in an aging population that uses more imaging per capita. For anyone waiting on a scan result, that is the number that matters."
