diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 0ee108a9f..0fdb52b22 100755
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -205,6 +205,12 @@ if(NOT DISABLE_STIR_CUDA)
       message(STATUS "STIR CUDA support enabled. Using CUDA version ${CUDAToolkit_VERSION}.")
       set(STIR_WITH_CUDA ON)
     endif()
+    # check if run-time is available for ctests
+    find_program(NVIDIA_SMI nvidia-smi)
+    if (NOT NVIDIA_SMI)
+      message(WARNING "nvidia-smi not found. Disabling the ctests using CUDA")
+      set(SKIP_CUDA_TESTS ON)
+    endif()
   else()
     message(WARNING "No CUDA compiler found. Setting DISABLE_STIR_CUDA to ON.")
     set(DISABLE_STIR_CUDA ON)
diff --git a/src/recon_test/CMakeLists.txt b/src/recon_test/CMakeLists.txt
index 8a5eaf169..93a0eb29e 100644
--- a/src/recon_test/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/recon_test/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -24,7 +24,6 @@ set(${dir_SIMPLE_TEST_EXE_SOURCES}
 	test_DataSymmetriesForBins_PET_CartesianGrid.cxx
         test_FBP2D.cxx
         test_FBP3DRP.cxx
-        test_priors.cxx
         test_blocks_on_cylindrical_projectors.cxx
         test_geometry_blocks_on_cylindrical.cxx
 )
@@ -37,6 +36,7 @@ set(${dir_INVOLVED_TEST_EXE_SOURCES}
         test_data_processor_projectors.cxx
         test_OSMAPOSL.cxx
         test_PoissonLogLikelihoodWithLinearModelForMeanAndListModeWithProjMatrixByBin.cxx
+        test_priors.cxx
 )
 
 if (DOWNLOAD_ZENODO_TEST_DATA)
@@ -149,3 +149,8 @@ if (parallelproj_FOUND)
   ADD_TEST(test_OSMAPOSL_parallelproj  test_OSMAPOSL ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/examples/samples/projector_pair_parallelproj.par)
 endif()
 
+if (SKIP_CUDA_TESTS)
+  set (CUDA_TEST_ARG "--skip-cuda")
+endif()
+
+ADD_TEST(test_priors test_priors ${CUDA_TEST_ARG})
diff --git a/src/recon_test/test_priors.cxx b/src/recon_test/test_priors.cxx
index 0f7cbd2b3..eb5e6249a 100644
--- a/src/recon_test/test_priors.cxx
+++ b/src/recon_test/test_priors.cxx
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
   \par Usage
 
   <pre>
-  test_priors [ density_filename ]
+  test_priors [--skip-cuda] [ density_filename ]
   </pre>
   where the argument is optional. See the class documentation for more info.