De-idenfication Profiles

De-identification profiles define which fields mrscrub should modify and how. These profiles should be written in YAML.

Overview

The general structure of a de-identification profile is

dicom:
  fields:
    - name: FieldName
      tag:
      - group code (hex)
      - element code (hex)
      action:
        action-name: value

Here’s a quick overview of what we’re looking at

• dicom

  • fields: a list of fields to de-identify

    • name: a name for the field (you decide)

    • tag: a DICOM tag (2 hex values)

    • action

      • action-name: the action you want to apply

Actions

There are several actions you can apply to a DICOM field. These are best explained with an example.

replace-with

If you want your de-identification policy to replace PatientName (0010,0010) with an empty string, you would use the replace-with action

dicom:
    fields:
      - name: PatientName
        tag:
        - 0x0010
        - 0x0010
        action:
            replace-with: ''

new-uid

Removing dates is doable with replace-with for some DICOM fields, but UIDs can also contain dates. To reassign SOPInstanceUID (0008,0018) for example, you would use the new-uid action

dicom:
  fields
    - name: PatientName
        tag:
        - 0x0010
        - 0x0010
        action:
            replace-with: ''
    - name: SOPInstanceUID
      tag:
      - 0x0008
      - 0x0018
      action:
        new-uid: true

Note

Note that replacing SOPInstanceUID will also trigger the replacement of any ReferencedSOPInstanceUID instances within SourceImageSequence or ReferencedImageSequence.

delete

Sometimes you may want to delete a field entirely. For example, if you wanted to delete the Siemens CSA header (0029,1020) you would use the delete action

dicom:
  fields
    - name: PatientName
        tag:
        - 0x0010
        - 0x0010
        action:
            replace-with: ''
    - name: SOPInstanceUID
      tag:
      - 0x0008
      - 0x0018
      action:
        new-uid: true
    - name: Unknown
      tag:
      - 0x0029
      - 0x1020
      action:
        delete: true

Example

You can find an example de-identification profile here.