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Project: Standardizing DICOM De-ID with Actionable Rules and Tests #1735

@dqdinh

Description

@dqdinh

Draft Status

Draft - team will hold off on page creation

Category

DICOM

Key Investigators

  • Dave Dinh (Consultant, Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA)
  • Deepa Krishnaswamy (Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA)
  • Matt McCormick (Fideus Labs, USA)
  • Andras Lasso (Queen's, Canada)
  • Steve Pieper (Isomics, USA)
  • Tina Kapur (Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA)

Project Description

DICOM de-identification (De-ID) efforts often overlap in the rules used to process DICOM metadata. This project aims to translate an existing DICOM De-ID standard into a set of actionable rules that can serve both as an implementation guide and as a verifiable audit trail for tools and AI systems.
For example, a standard may permit multiple actions for a given metadata field. A baseline reference can recommend a default action, while still allowing users to specify alternative behaviors as needed. The proposed generator will take user input and produce:

  1. A reference list of itemized, actionable rules
  2. A unit and end-to-end test specification that users can apply to their specific use cases

The initial user interface for the generator will be a command-line (CLI) tool. It will operate based on a predefined decision tree and output rules and test specifications in formats suitable for humans, AI systems, and supported programming languages.

In practice, DICOM De-ID outputs can vary depending on modality, imaging protocols, contractual requirements, and application domains. However, there remains a consistent need to validate that outputs conform to a predefined set of rules. This library represents a step forward in programmatically generating verifiable rules for reliable and consistent implementation.

Objective

No response

Approach and Plan

We want to create a well tested CLI based tool that takes in user input and generates the following:

  • A reference list of itemized, actionable rules
  • A unit and end-to-end test specification that users can apply to their specific use cases

Progress and Next Steps

Illustrations

No response

Background and References

https://dicom.nema.org/medical/dicom/current/output/html/part15.html#sect_E.1.1

https://github.com/clintools/dicom-curate

https://github.com/pydicom/deid

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