DicomEditor

DicomEditor is a utility program for viewing, editing, and de-identifying DICOM images. It is written in Java and requires Java 1.5 and the JAI ImageIO tools to be on the target computer. Its intended use is as a test program for MIRC development, but it can be used generally to modify DICOM images.

1 Installation

The installer for DicomEditor is available on the RSNA MIRC site. Click the Download Software link in the left pane in the left pane of the MIRC home page to obtain a list of all the available software.

To use the program, download the installer and run it. It will create a folder called DicomEditor and put the required files inside it. To launch the program, double-click the DicomEditor.jar file. You can create a shortcut to that file and put it anyplace convenient.

2 The Directory Tab

The Directory tab displays a split pane with a Director pane on the left and a Results pane on the right. The Directory pane is used to navigate to a file or a folder of interest. The pull-down menu in the header of the left pane lets you choose the root (drive) file system. The button in the footer bar lets you specify the extensions to accept.

Once a file or folder is selected in the left pane, clicking the Anonymize button in the footer bar of the right pane starts the de-identification process. The progress is shown in the Results pane.

• If an individual file is selected in the Directory pane, that is the only file that is processed.
• If a folder is selected and the Include subdirectories checkbox in the footer bar is not checked, then all the files in the folder are processed.
• If a folder is selected and the checkbox is also checked, then the program processes the files in the folder and all its subfolders, walking the directory tree below the selected folder. Only files matching the specified extensions are processed.
• If the Change names of anonymized files box is checked in the footer of the Results pane, the anonymized files are created with names ending in -no-phi. If the box is not checked, the files are overwritten with the processed results. When processing with the box checked, the anonymizer will not anonymize any file whose name ends in -no-phi.
• If the Use SOPIUID for name box is checked in the footer of the Results pane, the anonymized files are created using their SOP Instance UIDs for the file names. This check box takes priority over the Change names of anonymized files box. If the file's name is already its SOP Instance UID, it is overwritten by the processed file.

Certain other processing functions are provided in addition to anonymization:

• Fix DICOM verifies the VR values of all the elements in the file, changing any VRs which do not match the DICOM Data Dictionary.
• Clear Preamble overwrites the preambles of Part 10 files with all zeroes.
• If the Alt key is held down while clicking the Clear Preamble button, the preambles and DICM identifiers are removed from any files that do not contain a file metainfo group (group 2).

During processing, if the Force IVR-LE Syntax box is checked, the processed files are written with the Implicit Value Representation Little Endian transfer syntax.

3 The DICOM Viewer Tab

The DICOM Viewer tab displays a DICOM image along with its metadata. Certain elements in the metadata (most of the ones that are textual) are editable.

To open a DICOM file, click the Open button and use the file chooser to navigate to the desired file. To close the currently open image, click the Close button.

To edit an element, click its (group,element) designation. A dialog box will appear allowing you to change the value of the element.

If you have made one or more changes to an image, the Save and Save All buttons will be enabled. Save only saves the changes made to the current image. Save All applies the changes to all the images with the same StudyInstanceUID in the current directory.

An element name displayed in red is one that is referenced by a script that could cause the anonymizer to call its quarantine function and leave the image untouched. If you anonymize an image and the Results pane shows that the anonymizer called the quarantine function, look at the values in the red elements and see if there is something wrong.

To save a JPEG version of the currently displayed image, click the Save As JPEG button. A dialog box will appear allowing you to specify the maximum width of the saved image. The actual width of the saved image will be the minimum of the width of the DICOM image and the maximum width you specify. The height will be scaled to maintain the aspect ratio.

4 The DICOM Anonymizer Tab

DicomEditor uses the MIRC anonymizer to process files. The processing for each individual DICOM element can be specified in the DICOM Anonymizer tab. For a description of the script language, see The MIRC DICOM Anonymizer.

5 The Help Tab

The Help tab contains a list of all the script functions as a quick reference. If you find any problems with the program, please post them on the RSNA Forum Site in the MIRC Forum's User Comments thread.