Ear/dental/skull-feature removal

Remove ear, dental, and skull features that could enable 3D reconstruction.

Problem

Head CT scans may reveal identifiable facial features — ears, dental work, or skull contours — that can be used for biometric re-identification. Standard face defacing removes the facial surface, but ears and dental structures require additional targeted removal for complete de-identification.

Steps

1. Open a head CT/MR scan — click Open files… (⌘O).
2. Switch to Anonymization mode — click the Anon tab (⌘2).
3. Run auto-defacing — click Auto-Deface. The tool proposes redaction regions for Face, Left Ear, and Right Ear (3 regions total).
4. Verify ear coverage — confirm both ear regions fully cover the auricular structures in the axial views. Adjust bounding boxes manually if needed using the redact tool.
5. Dental/skull removal — for scans where dental work is visible, manually draw additional redaction regions over the mandible/maxilla area.
6. Apply and export — click Apply & Export. The exported DICOM has all soft-tissue identifying features blacked out from the pixel data.

Expected Result

• Face, left ear, and right ear regions are proposed by auto-defacing (3 regions).
• Ear and dental redaction regions fully cover identifiable features.
• Exported pixel data shows black rectangles at redacted locations.
• Diagnostic brain tissue outside redaction regions is unchanged.
• Manual redaction boxes can supplement auto-proposed regions.