Expert Determination workflow

Expert-guided de-identification with per-field risk assessment.

Problem

The pre-built anonymization profiles (Basic, HIPAA, +Pixel) are opinionated one-size-fits-all approaches. As a domain expert — a radiologist, clinical data manager, or privacy officer — you need to make per-field decisions about which tags to scrub, which to keep, and which to pseudonymize. The Expert Determination method under HIPAA requires you to document that the risk of re-identification is “very small” based on your specific dataset and use case. You need a custom profile builder where you can add, remove, and adjust rules tag-by-tag.

Steps

Create a Custom Profile

1. Open your DICOM file (⌘O) and switch to Anon mode (⌘2).

2. Select the Custom profile — click the Custom button in the profile picker. You’ll see a placeholder: “No custom rules configured yet.”

3. Add your first rule — in the custom rule form:

   • Enter a DICOM tag in the tag input, e.g. (0008,103e) for Series Description. You can use hex format (0008,103E) or dotted 0008103E.
   • Select an action from the dropdown: keep or remove.
   • Click Add.

4. Add a second rule — enter 00100010 (Patient Name) and set action to keep. Click Add.

5. Verify the rules appear — each rule is displayed as a row in the custom rules list showing the tag ID and the action (KEEP or REMOVE).

Save and Load Profiles

6. Export your profile — click 💾 Save Profile. A custom_anonymization_profile.json file downloads containing a JSON array of {id, act} objects.

7. Remove a rule — click the ✕ button on the (0008,103E) row. The rule disappears from the list, but the (0010,0010) rule remains.

8. Re-import the saved profile — click 📂 Load Profile, select the JSON file you just downloaded. Both rules (including the one you removed) are restored from the file.

Expected Result

• Custom rules are displayed as individual rows with tag ID and action label.
• Save Profile exports a valid JSON array: [{"id":"(0008,103E)","act":"remove"},{"id":"(0010,0010)","act":"keep"}].
• Remove deletes a single rule without affecting others.
• Load Profile restores all rules from the file, overwriting the current custom configuration.
• When you click Apply, the custom rules override the default anonymization behavior — tags marked “keep” are preserved, tags marked “remove” are deleted.
• This workflow supports the HIPAA Expert Determination requirement of documented, per-field risk assessment.