def decode(attribute):
    """Decode DICOM attributes from ISO_IR 100.

    DICOM headers are routinely encoded with ISO_IR 100 which is
    equivalent to IS0 8859-1.

    We currently expect all our DICOM headers to be encoded using
    ISO_IR 100. In this context DICOM string attributes returned
    by pydicom are 8-bit strings encoded with ISO_IR 100.

    Parameters
    ----------
    attribute  : str
        The 8-bit string to decode from ISO_IR 100.

    Returns
    -------
    unicode
        The decoded string.

    """
    return attribute.decode("latin_1")