How to get an item by title

I am trying to create a bulk update module, that would take a list of photos by its title, and then it would update a set of customfields of the photo. I am taking module bulkupload as the root the new module.

The issue is that I need to use a key to identify each photo I would like to update, and the most suitable field for me to accomplish this is the title field. So I pretend to read the title, then search in the gallery, obtain the id field and then update customfields.

I am looking for an API call to get a Gallery Item ID by its title, something like

Is there any API call to do this?

I know there is a search module and that I may extend it to search by title, but I would like to know whether there is a simple way.

Any other suggestion to approach this functionality is welcomed.