Work

DICOMs, Missiles, and Metadata: The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program Leverages a Medical Standard

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Digital Imagine and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images, although most commonly used in medical settings, have been widely adopted by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for capturing images of the internal components in a nuclear weapon. DICOMs, a lesser-known file format that combine nested metadata structures with complex image data-including multiple planes, frames, and high resolution-require the creation of access copies to support usability within the DOE. Used primarily for ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)’s DICOM images and corresponding image metadata must be accessible to scientists and researchers via our institutional centralized databases. This paper describes the author's creation of a Python script that converts DICOM images into accessible, archive-friendly TIFF files while preserving key image data and metadata.

Source: Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

DOI: 10.29173/istl2937

Author: Laura McGuiness

Institution: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Language: English

Topic: Digital and Traditional Archives Management

Subfield: Conservation

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Awards: G1017065088, G1279347439, G6410514744, G6563880843