Inventory SOP Instances may be very large, and may reside on a server separate from the application that needs to use them. The objects may be transferred to the using application using the DIMSE Non-Patient Object Storage Service (see Annex GG “Non-Patient Object Storage Service Class” in PS3.4), but that service transfers whole SOP Instances, and the using application may not require or want to store a whole Inventory object.

If the origin and destination support the DICOM web-based Non-Patient Instance Service and Resources (see Section 12 “Non-Patient Instance Service and Resources” in PS3.18), and if the origin server supports HTTP Range request headers, the destination application can interactively retrieve specific byte ranges of the SOP Instance using the mechanism of [RFC7233].

If the Inventory SOP Instances are made available through a non-DICOM protocol, that protocol may support interactive remote application reading of the file. Support for such protocols is typically integrated into the filesystem I/O capabilities of the using application's operating system.