It’s time to call MRI practitioners what they actually are: Magnetographers

Ask an MRI patient what they think the machine is doing to them, and you’ll be surprised how often the word radiation comes up. They’re not being uninformed, they’ve been set up by a naming problem decades in the making. The person who scanned them is a radiographer. The department is radiology. Often the sign on the door still says X-ray. Of course they’re confused. 

MRI does not use ionising radiation. It places the patient in a strong magnetic field, applies brief radiofrequency pulses, and measures the signals their hydrogen nuclei give off as they return to equilibrium. That is a world away from X-ray, CT or fluoroscopy, and yet the people running the scanner share a job title with those who do use radiation. In Australia, as in most of the English-speaking world, they are all radiographers. 

That made sense in the 1980s, when MRI was a curiosity. It is harder to defend now. As of December 2024, Australia had 20,861 registered medical radiation practitioners, around 16,500 of them diagnostic radiographers. The national scheme recognises three divisions: diagnostic radiography, radiation therapy and nuclear medicine, and everyone is built on ionising radiation. There is no division for MRI. We now have well over 400 MRI units running across neurology, musculoskeletal, oncology and cardiac work, and the people operating them still have no name of their own. 

Names follow the science

We tend to name professions after the science behind them. Sonographers take their name from sound, because ultrasound is acoustic physics. Radiographers take theirs from radiation, and their training reflects it: radiation physics, radiation biology, dose optimisation, and protection principles such as ALARA. All of that matters enormously for X-ray, CT and fluoroscopy, where keeping exposure justified and minimal is the central task. 

MRI sits in neither camp. It uses no sound and no ionising radiation. Where radiography builds an image from photons passing through the patient, MRI builds one from signals emitted by the patient after radiofrequency excitation inside a powerful magnet. The expertise involved is genuinely different: static and gradient fields, radiofrequency energy deposition, implant interactions, projectile hazards, acoustic safety, coil selection, pulse-sequence design. 

Our suggestion is straightforward: call them magnetographer. The word isn’t invented; it is constructed in the same way as sonographer. Magnetes is Greek for magnet, graphein means to record; a magnetographer records images with magnetism. When sonography split off from general radiography, nobody called it vanity. It simply acknowledged a discipline with its own physics, equipment and responsibilities. MRI has earned the same. 

A consent issue, not just a semantic one 

MRI safety depends heavily on patients accurately disclosing implants, devices and relevant medical history. Patients must understand they are about to enter a magnetic field strong enough to turn a wheelchair or oxygen cylinder into a projectile, and why full disclosure of every implant and device is essential. 

A patient who believes MRI is radiation is set up for the wrong conversation. They may be frightened of a scan they actually need. Worse, they may treat the implant screening questionnaire as a formality rather than the safety check it is. A title and a setting that signal magnetism shifts that conversation before it begins. Greet someone as a magnetographer, in a magnetic imaging suite, and you have told them in plain language what the risk is and why their honesty matters. Getting the name right is part of informed consent. 

The case for professional development 

MRI practitioners already do a great deal that sits outside ordinary radiographic practice. They run superconducting and electromagnets, screen every patient and visitor for ferromagnetic implants, select and tune radiofrequency coils, manage acoustic hazards, and in many sites serve as the designated MRI Safety Officer. 

“Radiographer” doesn’t capture much of that.

MRI practitioners now undertake dedicated MRI education, advanced safety training, and MRI-specific clinical competencies that extend far beyond the scope of traditional radiographic practice.

A distinct identity is the scaffold on which structured development is built. 

Sonography is the proof: it has its own credentialing, its own continuing professional development and a genuine career structure through ASAR, the Australasian Sonographers Accreditation Registry. MRI has now followed a similar path. AMRIA, the Australian MRI Association, is increasingly serving as the professional voice of Australia’s MRI workforce, while MRI-specific certification and safety frameworks are already well established overseas. 

The timing helps. The Medical Radiation Practice Board’s revised professional capabilities for medical radiation practitioners take effect on 30 March 2026, framing practitioners as safety and quality managers, communicators, leaders and stewards. That is also a close description of mature MRI work: running magnet-safety governance, explaining an unfamiliar hazard, and caring for expensive and complex systems. Give the discipline a name and its training, supervision and credentialing can develop around those skills, rather than staying tucked inside a radiation-based curriculum. 

The case for recruitment 

Recruitment is where this becomes urgent. From 1 July 2025, the Government replaced machine-by-machine Medicare licensing with practice-based licensing, so machines that were only partly eligible became fully eligible. Subject to legislation, from 1 July 2027 the licensing requirement goes altogether, bringing private-hospital, regional and clinic machines that never earned a rebate into full funding. MRI services will grow substantially over the coming decade. 

All of that must be staffed, and a profession that cannot name itself struggles to market itself. A school-leaver can picture becoming a sonographer; the MRI equivalent is close to invisible, hidden inside “radiography” and only really discovered after years of radiation-focused study. A clear title gives the workforce something to aim for, an identity to be recruited into, and a way to count MRI practitioners properly rather than folding them into a single radiographer tally. When demand is about to surge, a name is not decoration; it is a recruitment lever. 

Education that matches the destination 

None of this is an argument against radiography, which remains essential and is rightly built on the safe use of ionising radiation. It is simply that imaging now spans different physical sciences. Someone heading for an MRI career may spend years on radiation physics and protection they will rarely apply, and comparatively little on the magnetic resonance physics and safety they will use every day. As the non-ionising fields mature, it is fair to ask whether sonographers and magnetographers should have dedicated undergraduate or direct-entry postgraduate pathways of their own. A specialist title can sit comfortably alongside a generalist registration, as it already does for sonographers. 

Naming the reality 

MRI has been mainstream for more than forty years, and the Medicare changes will grow the workforce considerably. Getting the name right is not vanity. It tells patients what the hazard really is, gives the workforce an identity to be recruited into and developed within, and lets education and regulation line up with the science people actually practise. MRI practitioners are no longer defined by radiation. They are defined by magnetism. It is time the profession and its patients could simply call them magnetographers. 

Dr James Nol is Associate Professor of Advanced Imaging at the Western Sydney University School of Medicine, and Operations Director at Blacktown and Mount Druitt Hospitals Imaging. 

Professor Steven Boyages MBBS FRACP FAFPHM DDU PhD is Clinical Professor at The University of Sydney and The Australian National University.