DICOM Anonymization Levels
DICOM files store lots of protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) by default. This is great for radiologists, but bad for researchers. Any PHI/PII left in your DICOM files when sharing them with collaborators could be a big issue for you. Your IRB might shut down your project, shoot you into space, who knows. Make sure your data is anonymized, and anonymized in the way that your IRB wants.
Always anonymize your data before sharing!
NiDB offers 3 ways to export, and otherwise handle, DICOM data which are described below
Original - This means there is no anonymization at all. All DICOM tags in the original file will be retained. No tags are added, removed, or changed.
Anonymize - This is the default anonymization method, where most obvious PHI/PII is removed, such as name, DOB, etc. However, dates and locations are retained. The following tags are anonymized
0008,0090 ReferringPhysiciansName
0008,1050 PerformingPhysiciansName
0008,1070 OperatorsName
0010,0010 PatientName
0010,0030 PatientBirthDate
Anonymize Full - This method removes all PHI/PII, but also removes identifiers that are used by NiDB to accurately archive data by subject/study/series. If most of the tags used to uniquely identify data are removed... it's hard to group the DICOM files into series. So be aware that full anonymization might make it hard to archive the data later on.
0008,0090 ReferringPhysiciansName
0008,1050 PerformingPhysiciansName
0008,1070 OperatorsName
0010,0010 PatientName
0010,0030 PatientBirthDate
0008,0080 InstitutionName
0008,0081 InstitutionAddress
0008,1010 StationName
0008,1030 StudyDescription
0008,0020 StudyDate
0008,0021 SeriesDate
0008,0022 AcquisitionDate
0008,0023 ContentDate
0008,0030 StudyTime
0008,0031 SeriesTime
0008,0032 AcquisitionTime
0008,0033 ContentTime
0010,0020 PatientID
0010,1030 PatientWeight