Abstract A restricted artinian ring is a commutative ring with an identity in which every proper homomorphic image is artinian. Cohen proved that a commutative ring R is restricted artinian if and only if it is noetherian and every nonzero prime ideal of R is maximal. Facchini and Nazemian called a commutative ring isoartinian if every descending chain of ideals becomes stationary up to isomorphism. We show that every proper homomorphic image of a commutative noetherian ring R is isoartinian if and only if R has one of the following forms: (a) R is a noetherian domain of Krull dimension one which is not a principal ideal domain; (b) R ≅ D 1 × ⋯ × D k × A 1 × ⋯ × A l {R\cong D_{1}\times\cdots\times D_{k}\times A_{1}\times\cdots\times A_{l}} , where each D i {D_{i}} is a principal ideal domain and each A i {A_{i}} is an artinian local ring (either k or l may be zero); (c) R is a noetherian ring of Krull dimension one, simple unique minimal prime ideal 𝔭 {\mathfrak{p}} , and R / 𝔭 {R/\mathfrak{p}} is a principal ideal domain. As an application of our result, we describe commutative rings whose proper homomorphic images are principal ideal rings. Some relevant examples are provided.