 |
It is well known that DICOM files do not provide any means for
private data encoding. Text fields such as Patient Name or Patient
ID remain unchanged in DICOM headers, and one can easily read them
by opening the DICOM file as binary in any binary file editor (example).
This lack of security seriously limits medical collaboration and
data sharing.
UniPACS DICOM Anonymizer is designed to cleverly remove any private
DICOM information, making your DICOM files safe to distribute. While
all other DICOM anonymizers simply delete all private DICOM fields,
essentially making DICOM files DICOM-incompatible (certain fields
are required in well-formed DICOM data), UniPACS DICOM Anonymizer
takes a more refined approach:
1. All required DICOM private fields are encoded into meaningless
alphanumeric strings. The same names will be always encoded into
the same strings, to preserve data consistency.
2. All important dates are reset to January 1 of the same year.
Thus, the approximate date information is still preserved, but it
is not sufficient for personal identification. Only study date,
important for the image order, will be preserved.
3. All other optional private fields (names, locations, IDs, phone
numbers etc.) are removed, including proprietary (manufacturer-dependent)
DICOM tags.
As a result, the only remaining tags are those which are used strictly
for the image storage and display and the scrambled tags which cannot
compromise medical privacy of the persons and organizations involved.
This approach perfectly reflects HIPAA standards for secure exchange
of medical information.
UniPACS DICOM Anonymizer is included in our DICOM
Workstation and free DICOM Viewer,
so that you can both create and view anonymized DICOM files. It
can anonymize single files as well as file batches or entire file
folders with subfolders, in a single run. To apply UniPACS Anonymizer
to your DICOM file data, do the following:
1. If you do not have any of our products, download
our free DICOM Viewer.
2. Run it, and go to "File->Batch File Image Export"
menu.
3. In the file export format drop-down list, select "Anonymize
(.a)"
4. Browse files and folders and select the ones you want to anonymize.
5. Click the "Export files/folders" button to export your
DICOM files into anonymized DICOM files. Exported anonymized files
will be saved in the same locations as the originals, under the
same names, with additional .a extension. You may open these files
in our DICOM Viewer to make sure that all private information is
removed, or you can use them with other DICOM viewers and software.
|
|
;){kind=link}