AIC's 42nd Annual Meeting

Digital radiography is a technique developed and advanced by the medical and nondestructive evaluation and testing (NDE and NDT) industries. This has included the articulation of standards for the handling, storing, and transmitting of information produced by medical and NDE imaging – Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and Digital Imaging and Communication in Nondestructive Evaluation (DICONDE), respectively.


As it has done with other techniques developed in scientific contexts, the conservation field has adopted digital radiography as a tool for non-destructive investigation of cultural heritage materials. Without the funding and demand coming from the medical and NDE fields, however, we have not had the resources to create and develop our own standardization. We do have the option of adapting the previously established DICOM and DICONDE to create standards that support conservation and cultural heritage imaging work.


This presentation outlines an effort to initiate the conversation about the development of standardization in digital radiography, as applied to the imaging of cultural heritage materials. Information on setups and workflows gathered to-date from museums currently using digital radiography, as well as aspects of DICOM and DICONDE as models for metadata standards and other key components, will be discussed. The goal would be to create a resource for cultural heritage professionals using digital radiography, and a reference for museums transitioning from film-based radiography to this powerful digital imaging tool.