DICOM Rewriter

DICOM Rewriter

Author: Walter O'Dell PhD (wodell at rochester.edu)

History: 2003/09/23: First version

Source: Dicom_Rewriter.java

Installation: Download Dicom_Rewriter.java to the plugins folder, or subfolder, and compile and run using Plugins/Compile and Run. Restarting ImageJ will add a "Dicom Anonymizer" command to the Plugins menu or a submenu of the Plugins menu.

Description: This plugin acts to change the DICOM header information to remove identifying info: patient name, patient birth date, patient medical ID number
This is known to some as the 'anonymous-ing' operation. The patient name field will be replaced by the argument passed in by the GUI. This is intended so that you can replace the identifying patient name field with a generic, yet useful value such as 'patient 1', patient 2', ...
Execution Procedures:

Run ImageJ and you can then directly run the DicomRewriter from the plugins menu.
Go to the directory holding your dicom image files and click on any of the files in there that has the correct extension for your dicom images (note: the EndsWithFilter acts to select from the directory only the files in there there with the same extension as the one first selected, in case there are other extraneous files that you do not want corrupted or that would give the program a hard time.)
A GUI pops up to allow you to change the patient Name, Birth Date, and ID# fields. I did not bother to make the program be able to add additional bytes to the Dicom header (nor remove them), thus if the string you enter is longer than the original string value for the field of interest, the trailing characters of that string will be truncated to fit the space limits in the original header. Thus, if in the original images the field contained no data, then putting in values into the Gui text field will have no effect.
The corrected files are rewritten over the original image files. I have not had any problems with the test cases I have tried these on, but to be extra cautious, you really want to not loss the data perhaps you should backup the files before writing over them.
If you find that you made a mistake/typo in the name, birthdate and id# fields, you can always rerun the program on the same image files. Note that the field sizes were not changed from those of the original fields, thus if the first time you used a shorter name than the original, then the second time you can go back to a longer name (you are still limited by the original field size though).

See Also: Import Dicom Sequence,
DICOM Sort,
Query DICOM Header and
DICOM Import/Export Plugins.

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Author:	Walter O'Dell PhD (wodell at rochester.edu)
History:	2003/09/23: First version
Source:	Dicom_Rewriter.java
Installation:	Download Dicom_Rewriter.java to the plugins folder, or subfolder, and compile and run using Plugins/Compile and Run. Restarting ImageJ will add a "Dicom Anonymizer" command to the Plugins menu or a submenu of the Plugins menu.
Description:	This plugin acts to change the DICOM header information to remove identifying info: patient name, patient birth date, patient medical ID number This is known to some as the 'anonymous-ing' operation. The patient name field will be replaced by the argument passed in by the GUI. This is intended so that you can replace the identifying patient name field with a generic, yet useful value such as 'patient 1', patient 2', ... Execution Procedures: Run ImageJ and you can then directly run the DicomRewriter from the plugins menu. Go to the directory holding your dicom image files and click on any of the files in there that has the correct extension for your dicom images (note: the EndsWithFilter acts to select from the directory only the files in there there with the same extension as the one first selected, in case there are other extraneous files that you do not want corrupted or that would give the program a hard time.) A GUI pops up to allow you to change the patient Name, Birth Date, and ID# fields. I did not bother to make the program be able to add additional bytes to the Dicom header (nor remove them), thus if the string you enter is longer than the original string value for the field of interest, the trailing characters of that string will be truncated to fit the space limits in the original header. Thus, if in the original images the field contained no data, then putting in values into the Gui text field will have no effect. The corrected files are rewritten over the original image files. I have not had any problems with the test cases I have tried these on, but to be extra cautious, you really want to not loss the data perhaps you should backup the files before writing over them. If you find that you made a mistake/typo in the name, birthdate and id# fields, you can always rerun the program on the same image files. Note that the field sizes were not changed from those of the original fields, thus if the first time you used a shorter name than the original, then the second time you can go back to a longer name (you are still limited by the original field size though).
See Also:	Import Dicom Sequence, DICOM Sort, Query DICOM Header and DICOM Import/Export Plugins.