NIH spends $88M on radiology research, but specialty still represents small share of pie
Federal funding for radiology research has more than doubled since 2012, but practicing radiologists represent a small portion of clinicians on the receiving end of said funds.
New data reveal that clinician investigators consistently represented a minority of National Institutes of Health-funded researchers in radiology, accounting for just under 13% of all principal investigator roles since 2012. The authors of a new paper in Academic Radiology suggest that these findings could represent a shift in funding objectives, which may have the unfortunate consequence of reducing the reliance of clinician-scientists, regardless of the importance of their role in research.
“Grant-funded research supports the long-term development, validation and clinical implementation of innovative imaging technologies and advancements,” Ajay Malhotra, MD, with the department of radiology at Yale's School of Medicine, and colleagues noted. “Previous studies have shown a relatively low number of National Institutes of Health grant awardees in radiology as well as different specialties, with possible explanations including increasing competitiveness of grant applications and demands for increasing clinical productivity from clinicians. This has led to concerns about the survival of clinician-scientists in the modern era.”
For their study, researchers analyzed NIH grants issued between 2012 and 2025 to principal investigators in the “radiation-diagnostic/oncology” category using data from the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditure and Results (RePORTER) database. Researchers cross-linked the data with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services records to identify clinician-scientists in diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology and radiation oncology.
Overall, clinician investigators accounted for about 20.1% of clinician-attributable NIH funding within the category. Diagnostic radiology consistently led the three specialties in both the number of funded clinician investigators and total funding. Diagnostic radiology NIH spending increased from $39.9 million in 2012 to $87.9 million in 2025. During that same time, radiation oncology funding grew more rapidly, increasing from $14.3 million to $67.3 million. However, diagnostic radiology remained ahead of radiation oncology in both clinician investigator numbers and funding during every year analyzed.
The composition of funded investigators also changed over the study period. In 2012, diagnostic radiologists represented 64 of the 96 funded clinicians (66.7%), but by 2025, they accounted for 108 of 230 clinicians, or around 47%. The group observed an increase in female representation among funded diagnostic radiologists. Women accounted for 11 of 64 funded diagnostic radiologists in 2012, or around 17.2%, but accounted for 30 of 108, or 27.8%, in 2025.
These findings could be owed, at least in part, to newly implemented salary caps for federal grant funding. Prior to 2025, the cap applied only to direct salaries, but now it applies to both direct and indirect salaries. So, if an individual’s base salary is higher than the NIH salary cap of $228,000, which radiologist salaries far exceed, the difference must be covered by nonfederal sources.
“Since institutions have to cover this difference, this imposes a financial burden on academic practices to support clinician-scientists,” the group noted. “It also creates an incentive for institutions to expand the research footprint by having more nonclinical research faculty and nonradiologists (e.g., neurologists, psychiatrists) engaged in imaging research since their relative salaries are lower.”
Read more here.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.