Projects per year
Abstract
Objective: Medical imaging acquired for clinical purposes can have several legitimate secondary uses in research projects and teaching libraries. No commonly accepted solution for anonymising these images exists because the amount of personal data that should be preserved varies case by case. Our objective is to provide a flexible mechanism for anonymising DICOM data that meets the requirements for deployment in multicentre trials.
Methods: We reviewed our current de-identification practices and defined the relevant use cases to extract the requirements for the de-identification process. We then used these requirements in the design and implementation of the toolkit. Finally, we tested the toolkit taking as a reference those requirements, including a multicentre deployment.
Results: The toolkit sucesfully anonymised DICOM data from various sources. Furthermore, it was shown that it could forward anonymous data to remote destinations, remove burned-in annotations, and add tracking information to the header. The toolkit also implements the DICOM standard confidentiality mechanism.
Conclusion: A DICOM de-identification toolkit that facilitates the enforcement of privacy policies was developed. It is highly extensible and provides the necessary flexibility to account for different de-identification requirements, but at the same time, it has a low adoption barrier to new users.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1896-1904 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | European Radiology |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2010 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM)
- privacy policies
- Data Protection Act (DPA)
- de-identification
- anonymisation
- toolkit
- pseudonymisation
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Dive into the research topics of 'An Open Source Toolkit for Medical Imaging De-Identification'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 3 Finished
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SINAPSE - sub budget - Edinburgh
UK central government bodies/local authorities, health and hospital authorities
1/12/09 → 31/12/14
Project: Research
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Integrated image data storage and processing facilities to support clinical neurosciences
1/03/06 → 31/03/12
Project: Research