Recommended base image As suggested in my comment, you could write a Dockerfile that looks like: FROM python:3 RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip && \ pip install --no-cache-dir nibabel pydicom matplotlib pillow med2image # Note: we had to merge the two "pip install" package lists here, otherwise # the last "pip install" command in the OP may break dependency resolution… CMD ["cat", "/etc/os-release"] And the command example above could confirm at runtime (docker build --pull -t test . && docker run --rm -it test) that this image is based on the GNU/Linux distribution "Debian stable". Generic Dockerfile template Finally to give a comprehensive answer, note that a good practice regarding Python dependencies consists in specifying them in a declarative way in a dedicated text file (in alphabetical order, to ease review and update) so that for your example, you may want to write the following file: requirements.txt matplotlib med2image nibabel pillow pydicom and use the following generic Dockerfile FROM python:3 WORKDIR /usr/src/app COPY requirements.txt ./ RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip \ && pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt COPY . . CMD ["python", "./your-daemon-or-script.py"] To be more precise, this is the approach suggested in the documentation of the Docker official image python, §. How to use this image