An application that receives a CDA with image references, and is capable of using the full services of DICOM upper layer protocol directly, can use the WADO parameters in either the linkHtml or in the DGIMG Observation.Text to retrieve the object using the DICOM network services. Such an application would need to be pre-configured with the hostname/IP address, TCP port, and AE Title of the DICOM object server (C-MOVE or C-GET SCP); this network address is not part of the WADO string. (Note that pre-configuration of this network address is typical for DICOM applications, and is facilitated by the LDAP-based DICOM Application Configuration Management Profile; see PS3.15.)

The application would open a Query/Retrieve Service Association with the configured server, and send a C-MOVE or C-GET command using the study, series, and object instance UIDs identified in the WADO query parameters. Such an application might also reasonably query the server for related objects, such as Grayscale Softcopy Presentation State.