Overview: Private Data Element Tags

It is possible that multiple implementors may define Private Elements with the same (odd) group number. To avoid conflicts, Private Elements shall be assigned Private Data Element Tags according to the following rules.

Note:

a) The versions of this standard prior to V3.0 described shadow groups. These were groups with a group number one greater than the standard groups. Elimination of conflicts in Private Data Element Tags have made this distinction obsolete and this terminology has been retired.

b) The versions of this standard prior to V3.0 specified private group element numbers (gggg,10FF-7FFF) reserved for manufacturers and private group element numbers (gggg, 8100-FFFF) reserved for users. Elimination of conflicts in Private Data Element Tags has made this distinction obsolete and this specification has been retired.

Since each Item within a sequence is a self contained Data Set (see Section 7.5 of the DICOM Standard on the nesting of Data Sets via Sequences of Items), any Item which contains Private Data Elements shall also have Private Creator Data Elements reserving blocks of Elements for those Private Data Elements. The scope of the reservation is just within the Item. Items do not inherit the Private Data Element reservations made by Private Creator Data Elements in the Data Set in which the Item is nested.