DICOM Randomizer

DICOM Randomizer is a kind of DICOM Anonymizer that can be used to hide the identity of Patients, Referring Physicians and Institutions by replacing corresponding values with a randomly generated one. Additionally, it also clears content of certain DICOM Tags. It applies the randomly generated Patient, Referring Physician and Institution names consistently to all the DICOM files belonging to the same patient. This is done even the files are processed during different executions over time.

Therefore, DICOM Randomizer makes it possible to use DICOM files in your publications, demos, presentations and training sessions by protecting Patients' privacy.

Following is the list of Randomized DICOM Tags:

DICOM Randomizer is developed by Diligence Software, a company which provides PACS and Teleradiology solutions.

Download

You can download and freely use it. As it is written in Java, it can be used on any platform where JRE (Java Run Time) is available. If you do not have JRE version 5 or higher currently installed, you can get it from SUN Java Site. DICOM Randomizer also uses dcm4che DICOM Library to process DICOM files.

Installation

To install, simply unzip DicomRandomizer.zip archive to a folder of your choice (e.g. on Windows to C:\DicomRandomizer directory).

Configuration

DICOM Randomizer generates random names using the text files placed in conf directory at the end of the installation. You can edit these text files and adjust their content as you wish. Names of the files are self explanatory.

DICOM Randomizer not only replaces names contained in certain DICOM Tags, it can also remove certain DICOM Tags. The default list of Tags to be removed from DICOM files is provided in a file called tagsToRemove.txt in conf directory. If you are not familiar with the use and meaning of specific DICOM Tags, please refrain from editing this file.

How to run it

You can run DICOM Randomizer by executing runRandomizer.bat command file in the bin directory. It uses the following parameters.

Parameter Required Default Description Example
Input Directory yes none directory or root directory that contains the DICOM files to be processed C:\DicomFiles
Output Directory yes none directory or root directory where the randomized DICOM files will be created C:\RandomizedDicomFiles
File Name Pattern optional *
(means all the files - assuming that you have only DICOM files under the directory specified by Input Directory parameter)		 file name pattern to identify DICOM files to process. You can use wildcard '*' "-fn=*.dcm"
(please pay attention to the enclosing quotation mark '"')
Process sub-directories optional false include files in sub-directories of Input Directory during randomizing process -s
Verbose optional false print out names of the processed directories and files -v


Example:

   Assuming that you have unzipped DicomRandomizer to C:\DicomRandomizer directory

   cd C:\DicomRandomizer\bin
   runRandomizer.bat C:\DicomFiles C:\RandomizedDicomFiles "-fn=*.dcm" -s -v

Feedback

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