Working with Unique Identifiers (UIDs)

A unique identifier identifies items such as Service-Object Pair Classes and images. There are a number of unique identifiers that are standard for the DICOM file format. In addition to the standard unique identifiers, user-defined unique identifiers may also be added. Please note that while user-defined unique identifiers will work within LEADTOOLS, in order for new unique identifiers to work across countries, sites, equipment, etc., you must contact the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.

LEADTOOLS maintains a table (or list) internally of all available unique identifiers, standard and user defined. In this documentation the table of available unique identifiers will be referred to as the UID Table. Also provided in this documentation is a table of the default values for the standard UIDs. To see these default values, refer to the Default UID Table.

LEADTOOLS provides a number of functions for maneuvering through and modifying the UID Table. All functions pertaining to the UID Table have the form L_DicomxxxUID.

For maneuvering through the UID Table, LEADTOOLS provides the following functions:

L_DicomGetFirstUID

L_DicomGetLastUID

L_DicomGetPrevUID

L_DicomGetNextUID

L_DicomGetCountUID

To find specific items, based on either the unique identifier or an index into the table, use L_DicomFindUID and L_DicomFindIndexUID.

To insert new items in the UID Table, call L_DicomInsertUID.

You can delete individual items from the table using L_DicomDeleteUID, or you can delete all items from the table, using L_DicomResetUID.

To change the name of an item already in the table, call L_DicomSetNameUID.

To determine whether you have a valid pointer to a UID item, call L_DicomExistsUID.

To load UID items from a file, call L_DicomLoadXmlUID.

Finally, to reset the UID Table to the default values, use L_DicomDefaultUID.

For more information on UIDs, refer to An Overview of the DICOM File Format or the DICOM Standard.