6. Anonymization Profile

DICOM anonymization follows the DICOM PS3.15 Annex E Application Level Confidentiality Profile and applies a consistent set of rules to all processed DICOM data.

Direct identifiers, such as patient and physician names, are replaced. Patient ID and Study ID are deterministically hashed, dates are shifted using a patient-specific offset, and DICOM UIDs are regenerated with hashed values while preserving the relationships between related DICOM objects.

Patient sex, size, weight, and age are retained. When age is present, it is generalized by rounding it to 5-year buckets.

The same pseudonymization logic is applied to corresponding identifier fields in the clinical metadata so that anonymized DICOM data and anonymized clinical metadata can still be linked for analysis without retaining the original identifiers.

Local anonymization logs and mapping files may be generated in the output folder for institute review and traceability. These files remain local and must not be uploaded to the ZODIAC platform.