The problem of isomorphism among kinematic chains and of these derived mechanisms has been a hot area of research being done from last several years. The researchers so far have proposed many methods which are mainly based on characteristic polynomial and on some code based method to test the isomorphism among kinematic chains. In the present communication a new structural invariant based on link-link path distance (shortest) has been developed for a kinematic chain. Each link of kinematic

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... is assigned as a unique label using the invariant. The set of link labels are combined in the form a numerical label of kinematic chain, called kinematic chain label (KCL). KCL is proposed as unique identifier for detection of isomorphism among kinematic chains, and also used to find distinct mechanism of a kinematic chain. Method is tested on several cases of single degree of freedom plannar kinematic chain successfully with simple joints.