Libraries such as OpenCV, ImageIO etc. support loading of radiance RGBE (.hdr).

For example using OpenCV:

import cv2

# IMREAD_ANYDEPTH is needed because even though the data is stored in 8-bit channels
# when it's read into memory it's represented at a higher bit depth
img = cv2.imread(hdr_path, flags=cv2.IMREAD_ANYDEPTH)

Reference:

• https://matiascodesal.com/posts/how-read-hdr-image-using-python/