What the ranking found
A new analysis released this week by salary-transparency firm Marit Health, reported by Radiology Business, ranks the top 10 metropolitan areas for radiologists to practice. Marit weighed regional physician compensation, medical liability insurance premiums and housing affordability, and also factored in family friendliness, commute times, and health and fitness scores.
Minnesota's Twin Cities came out on top, ahead of Dallas-Fort Worth and Portland, Oregon. Per the analysis, Minneapolis-St. Paul ranked well on compensation, commutes, insurance costs and family friendliness, and sat "middle of the pack" on housing affordability and health/fitness. Notably, it also placed No. 1 across the four other specialties Marit examined — anesthesiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics.
Marit also flagged Richmond, Virginia as a "surprise contender, especially for pediatrics and radiology," citing short commutes, housing affordability and reasonable insurance rates that put it on par with larger metros like Seattle and Chicago despite generally lower salaries. Here is the full radiologist top 10 for 2026:
| Rank | Metro area |
|---|---|
| 1 | Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota |
| 2 | Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas |
| 3 | Portland, Oregon |
| 4 | Richmond, Virginia |
| 5 | Washington, D.C. |
| 6 | San Francisco, California |
| 7 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| 8 | Chicago, Illinois |
| 9 | Seattle, Washington |
| 10 | Boston, Massachusetts |
Marit compiled the list from its own salary and job-listing data for full-time, experienced (3+ years), employed W-2, nonacademic radiologists, plus median home values from Zillow, median commute times from the U.S. Census Bureau, and insurance costs from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
The list is a map of where supply concentrates
A "best places to practice" ranking is written for the individual radiologist choosing where to build a career. But flip the perspective to the imaging center trying to staff a reading list, and the same list reads as a supply map. The metros that score highest — strong pay, low malpractice premiums, short commutes, family-friendly — are exactly the ones radiologists gravitate toward when they have "flexibility on location," as Marit put it.
That is the quiet mechanism behind radiologist maldistribution. The workforce squeeze in imaging is not only a matter of raw headcount — it is a matter of where the available radiologists want to be. Supply clusters in the Twin Cities, Dallas-Fort Worth, Portland and a handful of coastal metros, while community and rural imaging centers outside those magnets compete for whoever is left. Two centers can face the same national shortage and experience it very differently depending on their ZIP code.
Why geography, not just headcount, drives the access gap
When supply concentrates, access follows. A patient's wait for a CT read can hinge less on clinical urgency and more on whether their center sits inside a talent magnet or outside one. For centers on the wrong side of that line, the consequences compound:
Recruiting is a bidding war they lose
A center in a lower-ranked market is competing against Minneapolis-level compensation, commute and lifestyle packages it often cannot match. Every open radiologist seat is contested by the same finite national pool.
Retention is fragile
Even a successful hire can be lured to a higher-ranked metro. Staffing built on out-recruiting the top markets is inherently unstable, and each departure reopens the coverage gap.
Turnaround and access suffer
Thin or intermittent coverage stretches report turnaround, pushes work to expensive locum or after-hours arrangements, and can delay care — the practical face of maldistribution for patients.
This is a different problem from the aggregate shortage. Even if the total number of U.S. radiologists rose, a distribution skewed toward a dozen metros would still leave many communities short. For a fuller picture of the headcount side, see our companion piece on the radiologist shortage in 2026, and on who gets left behind, our look at radiology AI and access disparities.
Decoupling reporting capacity from a ZIP code
If the core problem is that reporting capacity is tied to where radiologists want to live, the useful question is how to loosen that tie. AI-assisted CT reporting is one lever: it lets a center that cannot recruit a local radiologist still deliver fast, structured reads without depending on winning the metro talent war.
That is the model xAID is built on. A foundation-model AI drafts a structured, comprehensive CT report; xAID's in-house European radiologist reviews every preliminary; and the report is delivered ready-to-sign, so the center's own reading radiologist signs the final read that enters the patient's chart. A center in Richmond or a rural county doesn't need to out-bid Minneapolis for staff to keep its reading list moving — the capacity travels to the center, not the other way around. The geography that decides the "best place to practice" stops deciding who can get a timely read.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best metro area for radiologist jobs in 2026?
According to a July 2026 analysis by salary-transparency firm Marit Health, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota is the top U.S. metro area for radiologists to practice, ahead of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and Portland, Oregon. Marit ranked the top 10 metros using regional physician compensation, medical liability insurance premiums, housing affordability, family friendliness, commute times, and health and fitness scores.
How did Marit Health rank the metro areas for radiologists?
Marit Health compiled its list using its own salary and job-listing data for full-time, experienced (3+ years), employed W-2, nonacademic radiologists, combined with median home values from Zillow, median commute times from the U.S. Census Bureau, and insurance costs from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. City-level family friendliness and health and fitness rankings came from Marit's own data.
Why does the geography of radiologist supply matter for imaging centers?
Radiologist supply clusters in a handful of desirable metros that offer strong compensation, low malpractice premiums, and short commutes. Community and rural imaging centers outside those metros compete for the same finite pool of radiologists and often struggle to recruit and retain them. That geographic maldistribution means access to timely reads can depend less on patient need and more on where a center happens to be located.
How can understaffed imaging centers keep up without winning the metro talent war?
AI-assisted CT reporting lets centers that cannot recruit local radiologists still deliver fast, structured reads. With xAID, a foundation-model AI drafts a structured CT report, xAID's in-house European radiologist reviews every preliminary, and the report is delivered ready-to-sign so the center's own reading radiologist signs the final. This decouples reporting capacity from local hiring, helping level access for centers that can't out-compete top metros for staff.
Source: Marit Health analysis of the top metro areas for radiologists (July 2026), as reported by Radiology Business. Rankings and figures are reported as published.