" + DicomClient.PROJECT_NAME + "

View, Anonymize, and Upload DICOM files

Introduction

The primary purpose of the DICOM Anonymize/Upload tool is to anonymize DICOM files locally or cop from local storage on the desktop and put them into the PACS servers. The tool also has a simple previewer, which can be used to view DICOM files even if the user has no intention of anonymizing or uploading them. DICOM files can reside on any storage that the local system recognizes, including hard disk, CD, DVD, USB, or thumb drives.

Starting the Program

The program may be started by either:

dragging one or more DICOM files or directories onto the program icon
double clicking the icon

The program has two modes (Anonymize and Upload) indicated by radio buttons near the top of the screen. Choose the one that is appropriate for your needs. If you only wish to view (preview) files, then either mode will suffice. A file can be loaded by dragging it into the program. To load an entire directory, you can drag and drop a directory. If a directory is loaded, only the files immediately under that directory are loaded, sub-directories are ignored. It is also possible to select multiple files and/or directories and drag them as a group, and they will all be loaded. Loading files does not change them in any way, and is a good way to view DICOM files. Double clicking the shortcut icon will also start the program, but with no files loaded. After the program has been started, the user may drag additional files or directories into it and they will be added to the list. Files are listed in a hierarchy, which has three levels:

Patient

Study

Series

with descriptive information for each. Individual files for each series are not listed, but the number of files in each is shown. For each series, there is a Preview and an Anonymize or an Upload button. The Preview is used to preview the series before anonymizing or uploading. Any files that are not valid DICOM files, or, the program lacks the necessary permissions to read them, will be noted in the message field (lower left corner) and then ignored.

Anonymizing Files

Anonymizing creates copies of existing DICOM files with selected fields anonymized. New files are created, as opposed to over-writing files, and the new files are named with the new patient ID, modality, series number, and instance (slice) number. If necessary, an additional number is added. An example file name is: ANON3968_CT_2_0021.DCM To anonymize a series, select the Anonymize Mode radio button near the top center of the screen, and then click the Anonymize button next to the desired series. The user may perform anonymization on all series under a given patient by clicking the Anonymize Patient button, or may anonymize all series under all patients by clicking the Anonymize All button near the bottom right-hand corner of the window. After an anonymization is complete, a green indicator will be shown as confirmation. When Anonymize mode is selected with the radio button, the destination and Anonymize Options button will appear underneath, and all the Upload buttons will change to Anonymize. Each patient will show fields indicating the new patient id and name. By default, the destination is set to be a sub-directory named anonymize underneath the first directory of files loaded. This may be changed by entering a new value or use the Browse... button to select a directory. If the directory chosen does not exist, it will be created. Clicking the Anonymize Options will display the Anonymize Options window, which allows the user to customize the anonymization. For each patient, a default patient ID is randomly chosen. This may be changed if desired. By default, the patient name will be kept the same as the patient ID. If the user wants the patient name to be different from the patient ID, then click the checkbox to the right of the New Patient Name field and set the name as desired. When patient IDs are automatically chosen, the application makes each of them unique. By default, the list of fields is set up to reflect those recommended by the DICOM standard. The standard indicates that this list may in some cases be insufficient. For greater control over anonymization, use the Anonymize Options... button to display the the Anonymize Options window. This window shows the fields that will be anonymized and the new values to be used, except for UID values which due to their complexity are handled automatically. In general, users will not need to modify this list of values, but if so, then:

New fields may be added with the Add button at the bottom of the window.
Fields may be de-activated by un-checking their corresponding checkboxes.
Alternate values for fields may be chosen with the text boxes.

Note that existing files are never over-written, so performing anonymization twice will create two sets of files, even using the same source files. New UIDs (such as SOPInstanceUID, SeriesInstanceUID, and StudyInstanceUID) are automatically generated and all old UIDs are discarded. It is not possible to override this feature. When anonymizing multiple series that reference each other via their UIDs, it is important to anonymize them all in the same session (invocation of the tool) so that the UIDs in the anonymized files will be consistent across the different series. Anonymized files may be re-loaded into the program to inspect the changes with the previewer.

To Upload DICOM Files

Select the desired destination PACS by using the spinner (up and down arrows) near the top of the screen until the the desired PACS is shown. To upload all of the series for all patients, use the Upload All button. While a series is being uploaded, its buttons are replaced with a progress bar. The display reverts back to the buttons when the upload is complete. When an upload of a complete series is successful, a green circle with a white plus sign is shown next to its upload button. If all series have been uploaded, then an additional green icon is shown next to the Upload All button. These indicators are specific to the PACS that files have been uploaded to. In other words, if a series is indicated to have been uploaded, it is only for the PACS shown. Switching to a different PACS will change the indicator to reflect the upload status for that PACS. The upload state is reset when the program is exited, so if the program is restarted with the same DICOM files, they will be shown as not having been uploaded.

Previewing Files

To preview DICOM files, drag the slider for the corresponding series and the preview window will be shown. The preview window can show files as either images or text. There is a pair of radio buttons at the bottom to select the mode. The title of the preview window shows basic information that identifies the series, and near the top of the window it displays the file from which the data originated. In image mode, the three sliders can be used to control the contrast, brightness and size of the image. Between the sliders is a Reset button that resets the sliders to their initial position, which shows the image in an un-altered state. In text mode, there is search field where the user can type a string of text to search for. Searches are case-insensitive, and the currently selected matching string and the total number of matching strings are indicated as current of total. Searches are literal (as opposed to wild card or regular expressions), do not span lines, and can be used to search the names of fields as well their as values. The down and up arrows next to the search field can be used to navigate to the previous and next matches. The user can also select text and use conventional copy and paste to copy it to another application. The text can not be modified in place. In text mode there are also two shortcuts. After clicking in the text area:

Enter will position to the next matching text string.
Selecting text and then typing Ctrl-F will search for that text.

Pressing Enter from the search field will scroll the text window to show the next match. After the last match is scrolled to, the window will scroll back to the first match.

Running from the Command Line

This progam can be invoked to anonymize from the command line, which is useful for anonymizing large numbers of file or running from a service that does not display a GUI. The general command line usage is: DICOMClient [ -c ] [ -P patient_id ] [ -o output_file ] [ -3 ] [ -z ] inFile1 inFile2 ...

-c Run without GUI in command line mode
-P Specify new patient ID for anonymization
-o Specify output file for anonymization
-3 Restrict generated XML to 32 character tag names, as required by SAS
-z Replace each control character in DICOM attributes with a blank. Required by SAS
-g Perform aggressive anonymization, which looks for instances of the patient name and ID in all (not just anonymized) fields and anonymizes them.

Note that only anonymization is supported in non-GUI mode, not uploading.

Additional Notes

In general, uploading the same series multiple times has no real effect, but the behaviour is dicatated by the destination PACS. For ConQuest servers, the copy on the PACS is over written with the newly uploaded copy. Once a file has been uploaded it can not be un-uploaded. This program does not modify the original files on local storage. It is possible that images contain imprinted text data that should be anonymized, but this program does not support the blacking out of this data.