- What This Calendar Actually Covers
- The Written Exam Format Behind Your Test Date
- Eligibility Gates That Decide When You Can Sit
- Oral Exam Timing and the Conflicting Application Dates
- Fees, Payments and Deadline Mechanics
- Remote Proctoring: Scheduling Around MonitorEDU
- Scheduling Your Study Domains Backward From Test Day
- After You Pass: OCC Dates and Annual Obligations
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The combined written exam is 300 multiple-choice questions in three 100-minute sections, five hours of testing total.
- Written and oral fees are $800 each, so the two standard initial-stage fees add up to $1,600.
- Oral entry requires written success and fourth-year or later training; the oral exam covers ten stations.
- The oral page's relative application windows conflict with the timeline's oral dates, so confirm directly with AOBR.
What This Calendar Actually Covers
Searching for "exam dates" in this field tends to pull up unrelated credentials, so a quick identity check matters. This guide covers the Primary Certification in Diagnostic Radiology issued by the American Osteopathic Board of Radiology (AOBR), with AOA certification approval. It is not ABR Core, not an ARRT registry exam, and not radiation oncology. If you are still orienting yourself, the explainer on what Diagnostic Radiology certification is lays out the pathway before you start planning dates.
One honest caveat up front: the board's published materials describe the structure and the relative timing of the written and oral stages, but they do not give a single clean calendar of 2026 sitting dates that we can reproduce here with confidence. Rather than invent dates, this article explains how the dates are determined, which gates control your eligibility window, and where the board's own pages disagree. Treat the board's certification-process page as the authority for any specific day, and use this guide to understand what to ask and when.
The Written Exam Format Behind Your Test Date
Your scheduling decisions start with the written exam's shape, because the format determines how long you need to block off and how you should prepare for stamina. The written examination is a single combined exam of 300 multiple-choice questions, delivered in three sections of 100 minutes each. That is five hours of actual testing. The board also allows optional ten-minute breaks between sections, and those breaks sit outside the timed portion, so they do not eat into your question time.
The issuer describes the content as approximately 50 physics questions and 250 diagnostic imaging questions. No percentage weights are published, so do not let anyone sell you a "domain percentage" breakdown for this exam; the only defensible statement is the approximate question counts. A scaled score of 500 on a 200-800 scale is the written passing standard. For a deeper look at how that scale works, see the guide to the Diagnostic Radiology passing score.
| Written Exam Element | Published Detail |
|---|---|
| Question count | 300 multiple-choice |
| Sections | Three, each 100 minutes |
| Total testing time | Five hours |
| Optional breaks | Ten minutes between sections, outside testing time |
| Physics vs. imaging | Approximately 50 physics, 250 imaging |
| Passing score | Scaled 500 on a 200-800 scale |
A five-hour exam is a logistics problem as much as a knowledge problem. Plan a morning start, eat before the first section, and decide ahead of time how you will use each optional break. If you want a realistic read on difficulty before committing to a date, the difficulty guide is a useful companion.
Eligibility Gates That Decide When You Can Sit
The calendar you can actually use is set by training milestones, not just by registration windows. The published eligibility pathway includes a qualifying medical degree or a valid ECFMG pathway, a one-year approved internship, a four-year diagnostic radiology residency that includes 700 nuclear medicine training hours, active licensure, and ethics and training approval. The full breakdown is in the Diagnostic Radiology requirements article.
The residency-year conflict you should know about
Here is a genuine inconsistency in the source material. The written exam page contains an eligibility bullet referencing second-year residents, yet the same page explicitly restricts the combined written examination to third-year or later residents. We are not going to quietly reconcile those two statements for you. If you are a second-year resident wondering whether a given sitting is open to you, the safest reading of the restriction is that the combined written exam is for third-year or later residents, but you should get the board's answer in writing rather than rely on a bullet that may be a legacy remnant.
Oral entry is gated by the written result
You cannot schedule the oral exam first. Oral entry requires written success and fourth-year or later training. That sequencing effectively means your written date controls your oral date: a missed or failed written sitting pushes the oral stage later, and you should plan residency rotations and call schedules with that dependency in mind.
Key Takeaway
Map your training year against the written and oral gates before you pick a sitting. Written: third-year or later per the exam page. Oral: written success plus fourth-year or later training.
Oral Exam Timing and the Conflicting Application Dates
The oral exam is where the board's own pages diverge most visibly. The oral page describes a 4.5-hour exam, refers to eight cases at 20 minutes per case, and states that you must pass all ten stations. Those statements do not neatly add up to a single reconciled case count or a derived timer, and we will not manufacture one. What can be said safely is that the oral exam is a multi-station, case-based format with ten stations that must all be passed, and that the ten oral subject headings are covered within the imaging domains (Neuroradiology through Nuclear Medicine, Domains 9-18).
Separately, the overall timeline page lists oral application dates that conflict with the oral page's relative application windows. One source gives fixed dates; the other describes windows relative to the exam. Because you cannot determine which is current from the published text alone, the practical move is to contact the board and ask which governs for your cycle, then calendar the answer with a buffer.
Fees, Payments and Deadline Mechanics
Fees are one of the few areas where the numbers are clean. The written exam fee is $800 and the oral exam fee is $800, and the listed amounts include the corresponding reexamination fees. By simple addition, the two standard initial-stage fees total $1,600. The applications-and-payment page is the source for these figures. For the broader budget picture, including prep materials and recertification, see the certification cost breakdown.
| Stage | Fee | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Written examination | $800 | Listed amount includes corresponding reexamination fee |
| Oral examination | $800 | Listed amount includes corresponding reexamination fee |
| Two standard initial stages combined | $1,600 | By addition of the two fees above |
Build your own deadline checklist rather than waiting for a reminder: confirm application window, payment method, licensure documentation, and training-approval paperwork well before the cutoff. Training approval and active licensure are listed eligibility items, which means a lapse in either can derail an otherwise on-time application. If you are weighing whether the spend is justified, the ROI analysis walks through the trade-offs.
Remote Proctoring: Scheduling Around MonitorEDU
Written remote delivery follows the board's MonitorEDU Secure Browser and PARADIGM instructions. For scheduling purposes, that changes what "booking the exam" means: you are not only choosing a day, you are confirming that your computer, room and connection meet the proctoring requirements for a five-hour session.
- Run the technical check well ahead of test day, not that morning.
- Choose a room where you will not be interrupted for three 100-minute blocks plus optional breaks.
- Read the board's remote-proctoring instructions in full; they are the controlling document, not a third-party summary.
- Have a backup plan for connectivity, and know the board's procedure if a technical issue interrupts a section.
Because the instructions are maintained on the board's remote-proctored-exams page, check it again close to your exam week in case requirements have been updated.
Scheduling Your Study Domains Backward From Test Day
This is the one place for a study template, and it is tied directly to the exam's structure. The published outline reproduces Part I (Physics, Domains 1-8) and Part II (Diagnostic Imaging, Domains 9-18). Since roughly 50 questions are physics and roughly 250 are imaging, imaging deserves the bulk of your calendar, but physics is the area residents most often leave until last and then rush. Schedule it early so it can be revisited. The full topic list is in the domains guide, and the study guide expands on method.
Physics foundation (Domains 1-4)
- Biological effects and safety, radiation production and interaction with matter
- Radiation biology and radiation safety and protection
Imaging physics (Domains 5-8)
- Radiography, fluoroscopy, CT, mammography physics
- Ultrasound, MRI and nuclear medicine physics
Organ-system imaging (Domains 9-12)
- Neuroradiology, vascular/interventional, cardiopulmonary, genitourinary
Remaining imaging (Domains 13-18)
- Ultrasound, breast, GI, musculoskeletal, pediatric, nuclear medicine
Full-length simulation
- Three 100-minute blocks to build five-hour stamina
The reason physics comes first is simple: Ultrasound and Nuclear Medicine each appear twice in the outline, once in the physics part and once in the imaging part, and the two treatments test different things. Learning the physics versions early gives the clinical versions something to attach to. A one-page recap is available in the cheat sheet, and you can pressure-test your timeline with the practice tests.
Why the repeated headings matter for planning
Domains 6 and 13 are both Ultrasound; Domains 8 and 18 are both Nuclear Medicine. They are not duplicates.
- Domains 6 and 8 reproduce the physics-part topic bullets.
- Domains 13 and 18 reproduce the diagnostic-imaging-part topic bullets.
- Budget separate study blocks for each, rather than treating them as one subject.
After You Pass: OCC Dates and Annual Obligations
Certification dates do not stop at the oral exam. Current Osteopathic Continuous Certification (OCC) includes automatic enrollment for time-limited diplomates and a $300 annual fee. Within each three-year cycle, the published components include 60 CME credits for 2025-2027 with no category or specialty quota (this current component guidance takes precedence over the overview's older specialty-credit wording), 15 SAMs/SA-CME that also count toward CME, maintenance of active licensure, and one practice-performance assessment.
The old ten-year OCC examination has been replaced by a current cognitive assessment. Be careful here: the retrieved Policies and Procedures document, revised September 2013, describes a historical separate-exam structure, additional physics headings and legacy ten-year certificates. It is not a verified current blueprint, and it does not establish a blanket validity term for newly issued certificates, so this article does not assert one. For the career side of holding the credential, see Diagnostic Radiology jobs and the salary guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
It consists of 300 multiple-choice questions in three 100-minute sections, totaling five hours of testing. Optional ten-minute breaks between sections fall outside that time.
The written page contains a second-year eligibility bullet but also explicitly restricts the combined written exam to third-year or later residents. Because the page conflicts with itself, confirm with AOBR in writing before applying.
The written and oral fees are $800 each, including the listed corresponding reexamination fees, for $1,600 across the two standard initial-stage fees. This excludes prep materials and OCC fees.
You need written success and fourth-year or later training. The board's timeline page and oral page give conflicting application timing, so ask AOBR which applies to your cycle.
No AOBR diagnostic radiology pass rate was verified, and ABR or residency-level figures are not valid substitutes. See the pass rate article for what can and cannot be said responsibly.