Introduction

The first step in DICOM networking with pynetdicom is the creation of an Application Entity by using the AE class. A minimal initialisation of AE requires no parameters:

>>> from pynetdicom import AE
>>> ae = AE()

This will create an AE with an AE title of 'PYNETDICOM'. The AE title can set by supplying the ae_title keyword parameter during initialisation:

>>> from pynetdicom import AE
>>> ae = AE(ae_title='MY_AE_TITLE')

Or afterwards with the ae_title property:

>>> from pynetdicom import AE
>>> ae = AE()
>>> ae.ae_title = 'MY_AE_TITLE'

AE titles must meet the conditions of a DICOM data element with a Value Representation of AE:

• Leading and trailing spaces (hex 0x20) are non-significant.

• Maximum 16 characters (once non-significant characters are removed).

• Valid characters belong to the DICOM Default Character Repertoire, which is the basic G0 Set of the ISO/IEC 646:1991 (ASCII) standard excluding backslash (\ - hex 0x5C) and all control characters (such as '\n').

• An AE title made entirely of spaces is not allowed.

When creating SCPs it’s also possible to give each SCP its own AE title through the ae_title keyword parameter in AE.start_server().

References

• DICOM Standard, Part 5 Section 6.2

• DICOM Standard, Part 5 Section 6.1.2.1

• DICOM Standard, Part 5 Section 6.1.3

• DICOM Standard, Part 8 Section 9.3.2

• DICOM Standard, Part 8 Annex B.1

• DICOM Standard, Part 8 Annex B.2