Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)

16.3 Implementing DICOM 327
Fig. 94 Sketching binary buffer class implementation. The most typical (and efficient
way) is to implement the buffer as an array of (fixed-length) buffer chunks; proper
choice of the chunk size optimizes memory allocations
Fig. 95 Sketching value representation (VR) class. m_Type member stores VR type
(27 possible types), and m_Data holds the attribute data. The main emphasis in VR
implementation is to support all DICOM data encoding methods (explicit and implicit),
and various data types
tags for VR type and description should be instantaneous. This is your main
data-typing tool; all VR types will be retrieved from the Data Dictionary.
5. Write a function that converts your VR into XML and reads it back from this
XML object. DICOM, in many ways, is very XML-like, and with XML being
the dominant data format these days, converting DICOM data into it and
back will prove to be extremely useful. In particular, you will need it for
serialization, logging, and database storage.
6. When you finish your with VRs, proceed to defining classes for DICOM modules,
IEs, and IODs (see 5.7). Code base an abstract class for each DICOM
module and derive specific classes for each particular module type; then use