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DicomCleaner is a free open source tool with a user interface for importing, "cleaning" and saving sets of DICOM instances (files). It can:
"Cleaning" is used to refer to the process of removing and/or replacing information in the DICOM "header". The user is given control over what to remove and replace, including the ability to import and export without doing any cleaning at all, or to completely de-identify the header and replace the identifying attributes with new values. Use cases that are supported include:
The user is provide with control over:
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Some types of images, particularly ultrasound, screen shots of analysis panels and 3D rendering, digitized film or paper documents, and some nuclear medicine images, contain identifying information not just in the DICOM "header", but also burned in to the pixel data, which needs to be "blacked out" by replacing the pixel values using an image editor.
The "Blackout" button in the main DicomCleaner control panel provides this capability. When a set of images has been cleaned and selected in the "Cleaned" panel, pressing "Blackout" brings up an image editor that allows rectangular regions of the image to be filled with black pixels.
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The user has control over which value is used to replace the blacked out pixels. If Use Padding and Use Zero are unchecked, then the lowest possible pixel value given the signedness and bit depth of the pixel data will be used. If Use Padding is checked (which it is by default), then Pixel Padding Value, if present in the header, will be used instead of the lowest possible value. If Use Zero is checked, than a value of zero will always be used, regardless of the lowest possible value or Pixel Padding Value; this is sometimes necessary if no windowing information is present in the header, and the lowest possible value turns out to be very -ve (everything turns white after Save is pressed).
Some images also contain information in overlay planes that are intended to be displayed on top of the pixel data, and this also can contain identifiable information that needs to be removed.
The "Overlays" checkbox in the "Blackout" panel activitates display of this information, which can then be blacked out, in which case the remaining overlay information will be "burned in" to the saved pixel data and the overlays themselves removed. Indeed, even if there is no need to blackout the overlay information, the side effect of burning in the overlay may be useful, particularly if downstream viewers do not support overlay display, as many do not.
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DicomCleaner is an Java Web Start (JWS) application that you can run from within a web browser. It runs on any platform that supports Java 1.5 or greater, and does not require any "installation" per se. Just click on the DicomCleaner link. If you like, you can right-click on the link to save it as a Desktop Shortcut to make it as easy to start up as any other application, but this is not required, since you can always start it from a browser.
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Whenever you use the web start application, it will automatically check for the latest version on the web site and use that, so you never need to be concerned about upgrading or maintenance.
If you want to use a DICOM network (rather than importing from or exporting to folders and files), you can use the "Configure" button to enter information about remote DICOM network devices and the port and AET of the DicomCleaner itself.
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This information will be saved in a properties files located in the user's home directory, called ".com.pixelmed.display.DicomCleaner.properties", so that you do not have to re-enter it next time. The property file can also be created or edited manually, though any comments will be lost when the "Configure" button in the user interface is used to update it. Here is an example properties file. The application also supports DNS self-discovery of other DICOM applications, though this is not widely deployed.
If for some reason you do not want to start the application using Java Web Start, but instead want to download it and install it, several versions are available:
The downloaded installable version does NOT automatically update when new versions are released, however.
If you need to report a problem, and want to know what version you are using, look at the status bar immediately after startint the application:
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The open source code is contained within the PixelMed toolkit.
Click here to start the DicomCleaner.