Very often questions are asked about DICOM Router/Gateway implementations. So this is a summary of the options.

DICOM allows a dataset to contain other nested datasets, which are encoded as “sequences”.

A Meta SOP class is used where it is required to negotiate a “set” of SOP Classes as a batch, as one would not be useful without the others. The Meta SOP classes still used in DICOM are:

SOP class is one of those horrible obscure expressions used in DICOM which put people off the standard immediately!

DICOM uses TCP (transmission control protocol) as its underlying network transport layer, and despite its widespread and generally successful use around the world for most Internet use, TCP does have some significant limitations.

Developers often ask for advice on how to create their own UIDs and manage roots, so here is a suggested simple scheme.