In many cases, where the image has been generated in a country using the same character set as that in which it is being viewed, characters can normally be used without direct reference to the DICOM character set (0008,0005), but this is not always the case, especially when images are sent internationally.  This method therefore uses the known character set to produce an unambiguous Unicode version of any text string, translated according to the appropriate encoding.
The DICOM rules only require the character set identifier (0008,0005) in the “top level” dataset, and this is presumed to apply to any nested datasets in sequences, but in DicomObjects, a DicomDataSet is not uniquely associated with any particular sequence, and a sequence (DicomDataSets object) could be incorporated into many other datasets, so when finding the value of a Unicode string in a nested item, it is important to specify also the “top level” dataset to be used for interpretation, and this is what the new UnicodeValue2 property permits.

For more details, please see the section on Extended Character sets in DicomObjects

DicomAttribute Object  | DicomAttribute Members