A typical MRI scan takes between 25 and 60 minutes, depending on which body part is being imaged. With check-in, preparation, and any post-scan waiting, plan for your entire appointment to take roughly 1.5 to 2 hours from arrival to walking out the door.
Scan Times by Body Part
The part of your body being scanned is the biggest factor in how long you’ll be in the machine. Joint scans tend to be the quickest, while scans of the chest and heart take the longest.
- Knee, ankle, hip, elbow, or wrist: 25 to 45 minutes
- Brain or spine: about 45 minutes
- Abdomen or pelvis: 45 to 60 minutes
- Breast: 45 minutes to 1 hour
- Cardiac (heart): 1.5 to 2 hours
If your scan requires contrast dye, which is injected into a vein partway through the exam, expect roughly 15 extra minutes. The technologist will pause the scan, administer the injection, and then resume imaging. You don’t need to leave the machine for this.
What Happens Before You Enter the Scanner
Most imaging centers ask you to arrive 15 to 30 minutes before your scheduled scan time. During that window, you’ll check in, fill out a safety questionnaire, and change into a gown if needed. The questionnaire screens for anything that could be dangerous inside the MRI’s powerful magnetic field: pacemakers, metal implants, shrapnel, or even certain tattoo inks. A technologist will review your answers with you before you go in.
You’ll also need to remove jewelry, watches, hair clips, belts, and anything else with metal. Some facilities provide lockers. If you wear hearing aids or have removable dental work, those come out too. This prep process is quick but thorough, usually taking 10 to 15 minutes.
Why Some Scans Take Longer Than Expected
Movement is the most common reason an MRI runs over its estimated time. The machine captures images in sequences, and even small shifts in position can blur a sequence enough that the technologist needs to repeat it. Each repeated sequence adds roughly 4 minutes to the exam. If you move several times, those minutes stack up.
Staying still sounds simple, but lying motionless on a hard surface for 30 to 60 minutes is harder than most people expect. The machine is also loud, producing rhythmic banging and buzzing sounds that can make you tense up involuntarily. You’ll be given earplugs or headphones, and many centers let you listen to music. Focusing on slow, steady breathing helps more than you might think.
Certain clinical situations also extend the scan. If the radiologist reviewing your images in real time wants additional angles or sequences, the technologist will let you know through the intercom. Breast MRI appointments that lead to an immediate biopsy can stretch to a full hour. Functional MRI, which maps brain activity rather than just structure, generally takes up to an hour because it captures the brain responding to tasks or stimuli in addition to standard imaging.
Sedation Adds Recovery Time
If you receive sedation for claustrophobia or anxiety, the scan itself takes the same amount of time, but you’ll need to stay afterward while the sedation wears off. Recovery typically takes 30 to 45 minutes in a monitored area. Staff will check that you’re alert, stable, and able to walk before you’re cleared to leave. You’ll need someone to drive you home, so factor that into your planning as well.
Children and people who cannot stay still for medical reasons sometimes require deeper sedation or general anesthesia. In those cases, the total appointment can be significantly longer because of both the setup and the extended monitoring period afterward.
Faster MRI Technology
Newer MRI protocols are cutting scan times substantially. Abbreviated breast MRI protocols, for example, reduce actual scan time from about 29 minutes to around 18 minutes. The total appointment time (including check-in and positioning) drops from roughly 50 minutes to 36 minutes. These accelerated protocols use software that reconstructs high-quality images from less data, and they’re becoming more widely available for other body parts too.
Not every facility offers fast protocols yet, and your doctor may still order a full-length scan if they need the most detailed images possible. But if scan time is a concern for you, it’s worth asking your imaging center whether an abbreviated option is available for your specific exam.
How Long Results Take
Once your scan is finished, a radiologist interprets the images and sends a report to your ordering physician. For non-emergency outpatient scans, this has historically taken a few business days. However, turnaround times have been increasing across the industry. A study of 2.6 million outpatient imaging exams found that MRI interpretation turnaround times increased by 256% between 2014 and 2023, with the sharpest rise occurring after 2021.
In practice, this means your results could arrive anywhere from 2 days to over a week after your scan, depending on the facility and how backed up their radiologists are. Emergency or inpatient MRIs are read much faster, often within hours. If you haven’t heard anything after a week, call your doctor’s office directly rather than waiting.