Anonymize DICOM files, remove burned-in annotations

The program has the ability to remove confidential data from the header of DICOM files, and burned-in annotations of their images. The user can anonymize a single file, a study (multiple single-frame files which belong to the same examination) or all files within a folder ant its sub-folder (batch anonymization).

Contents

• Adjust anonymization options
• Anonymize many DICOM files within a folder

Adjust anonymization options

From menu select "OptionsAnonymizing Options". The dialog box below will be appeared, and allows you to select the specific fields which will be removed from the file?s header.

OK button: Accepts the user selection, and closes this dialog box.
Cancel button: Cancels the selection, and closes this dialog box.
Help button: Displays this help topic.
Check all button: Press this button to select all fields for removing.
Uncheck all button: Press this button to deselect all fields from removing.
Show attention message when critical fields have not been removed because of this setup:
Enable this option to allow the program to generate a warning message, when you attempt an
anonymizing and there are critical fields which remain on file?s header, because of this setup.
Show attention message when burned-in annotation flag (0x0028,0x0301) is set:
Enable this option to allow the program to generate a warning message, when the file?s header indicates that there are burned-in annotations on the images, because in this case the header anonymizing is not enough to protect patient information.
Remove all private "PN" tags: Enable this option to allow the program to remove all "PN" tags from the header, either they are nested inside sequences, or they are tags which belong to machine vendor. Back to contents


Anonymize many DICOM files within a folder

First of all adjust anonymization options. Then, select "FileBatchAnonymize", from program's menu.
Use this command to batch remove patient information from DICOM files within a folder and its subfolders, and to remove burned-in annotations. The filenames of the new files are the same with the old ones with an "_anon" suffix, to avoid overwriting of the original files. If you want to collect the anonymized files, search within the folder for files with "_anon" as part of their names (e.g. "*_anon*"), and use a utility like winzip or winrar to compress the files. In these utilities enable the "Keep directory structure" option, to avoid overwriting files with the same name in different location. After that, extract your zip to a new location, and delete the old "_anon" files from the file explorer's search window.

• Browse button: Use this button to select the directory, which contains the DICOM files.
• Include Subdirectories checkbox: Enable this option to force the program to anonymize also the header of the files within the sub-directories of the selected folder.
• Overwrite prompt checkbox: Enable this option to force the program to generate a warning prompt, when it attempts to overwrite an existing file.
• Create DICOMIR checkbox: Enable this option to force the program to generate a DICOMDIR file for the anonymized files. The old files are not included in the DICOMDIR file. If already there is a DICOMIDIR file within the folder it will be renamed to ?DICOMDIR.old?.
• Anonymize button: Press this button to start the procedure.
• Close button: Closes this dialog box.
• Help button: Displays this help topic.
• Options button: Allows the user to select the specific fields which will be removed from the file?s header.
• Rectangles button: Allows the user to set up to four rectangles which will be filled with the background color, in order to remove burned-in annotations, from all frames of the file. The program automatically selects the color of the upper-left pixel of each rectangle as the background color for this rectangle.
  

  x1, y1: Specify the upper left corner of each rectangle. x2, y2: Specify the down-right corner of each rectangle. Clear button: Clears the x1,y1,x2,y2 values. Save button: Saves the rectangles to registry. Load button: Loads the previously saved rectangles from the registry.

Back to contents