Skip to main content

DICOM with the Medplum CLI

The Medplum CLI can store a DICOM file through STOW-RS directly, which makes it the fastest way to get imaging into a project — no Agent, no modality, no hand-built multipart body.

npm install --global @medplum/cli
medplum login
medplum dicomweb stow MRBRAIN.DCM

medplum dicomweb stow​

medplum dicomweb stow <file>

Reads a DICOM Part 10 file, wraps it in a multipart/related body with Content-Type: application/dicom, and posts it to /dicomweb/studies on the configured server. The file is streamed from disk into the request rather than read into memory first.

On success the STOW-RS response is printed — a DICOM JSON dataset containing a Referenced SOP Sequence naming the SOP Class UID and SOP Instance UID of each stored instance.

The command accepts the CLI's standard authentication and server options — stored credentials from medplum login, MEDPLUM_CLIENT_ID / MEDPLUM_CLIENT_SECRET environment variables, or --client-id / --client-secret flags. Set MEDPLUM_BASE_URL to target a self-hosted server.

One file per invocation; there is no glob or directory form yet. To upload a directory of instances, loop in the shell:

for f in ./study/*.dcm; do medplum dicomweb stow "$f"; done

Each file is a separate STOW-RS request, but because studies and series are created conditionally on their DICOM UIDs, the instances still collect under a single DicomStudy and its series.

Verifying the upload​

Instances land in the DICOM data model immediately; pixel data extraction happens in the background. Check with an ordinary FHIR search:

medplum get 'DicomStudy?_count=5'
medplum get "DicomSeries?study=DicomStudy/$STUDY_ID"

Or over DICOMweb:

curl https://api.medplum.com/dicomweb/studies \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MEDPLUM_TOKEN"

See also​