Namespace Anonymisation
This guide will cover the "Anonymise Fields" options for a namespace. It will give a few utilitarian examples and explain how these can be modified to suit the work flow requirements.
Anonymisation rules will take the original value for a study field and replace it with a pre-chosen value e.g., Patient Name -> ??. This change will also apply to the DICOM tag meaning image meta data will contain the new value.
Depending on when you configure the anonymisation to trigger it will function slightly differently. There are two options for when to have the fields anonymised, "Before Upload" or "After Upload".
Note: These setting will not remove PID applied to the image by a Modality, to remove this you will need to use the "Redact" feature.
Before Upload "Server side anonymisation"
This will apply any anon rules before the study reaches the Cimar Platform. The value here is that the " Study Audit" will not contain any "PID" information.
Note: This option is more technical to configure, if you have requirements for server side anonymisation please contact your Cimar representative, or email support@cimar.co.uk for assistance with this.
After Upload "Client side anonymisation"
This option will apply any anon rules after the study reaches the Cimar Platform. The original " PID" will be available in the "Study Audit" and is simpler to configure (as per the following guide).
For this option you would have a Namespace that applies the anonymisation, then a routing rule to share the study into the required namespace. The shared study will not contain any " PID" in the "Study Audit".
Applying Anonymisation
Navigate via the UI to the name space in which you need to apply the anonymisation rules, (for "Client side anonymisation" this should be a holding space, not the final destination of the study) and click the " Edit" button.
Step 1: Click on Administration to navigate you to options
Step 2: Click on Locations/Groups to create or edit namespaces
Step 3: Edit the namespace of choice
Step 4: Choose the field to be anonymised from the " Anonymise Fields" dropdown menu.
Into the text input box on the right of the chosen field insert the value to replace the chosen input. A simple string can be used to replace any value e.g., Patient ID : ?? will replace the "Patient ID" with the value "??".
You can also apply a counter to a field that will increment by a specific amount every time a study is uploaded. The counter takes special input of __COUNTER-001__ and allows for optional text to prepend the value. The number input is customisable and can be any length e.g., 01, 001, 0001, ...
Counter values can be set to increment in values of 1, 10, 100 ... e.g., 0001 will increment by 1 (0001, 0002, 0003). 0010 will increment by 10 (0010, 0020, 0030).
Taking the below example, see how the values change.
- Patient ID : "Patient ID"
- Patient Name : ANO-__COUNTER-01__
- Other Ingress Tags : "??"
- Other Ingress Tags include any available DICOM tag and can be set by a Cimar Administrator.
Regexp can be used for greater control over these changes e.g.,
- s / ( \ w { 3 } ) . * / $ 1 ? ? /
Note: The above regexp contains spaces for ease of reading, if used present without <s/(\w{3}).*/$1??/>
Above will capture the first three characters in a field, then replace any number of remaining characters with the single value "??".
The next step is to share the anonymised study into the required namespace destination. This version will still contain PID in the "Study Audit", the shared version will not. This can be automated using a routing rule.
Before Share
After Share
Note: If using "server side anonymisation" you will need to use a dictionary to correctly increment the __COUNTER__, talk to your Cimar representative or email support@cimar.co.uk for assistance with this.