Anonymize and Forward in a single Step

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1

Dear all,

I’m currently using Orthanc as a DICOM anonymization system running two Orthanc instances. Orthanc A has only C-STORE enabled to receive DICOM instances, once a Patient becomes stable the data is anonymized and then forwarded to a Orthanc B. Afterwards both the original DICOMs and the anonymized DICOMs are deleted from Orthanc A. From Orthanc B the anonymized data can be retrieved using C-FIND, C-GET, etc. I’m using this two Orthanc Instances approach to make sure that the original non-anonymized data can never be retrieved as Orthanc A only enables storage.

My question is if there is any way how I can avoid the intermediate step of saving the anonymized DICOMs on Orthanc A before forwarding them to Orthanc B. This intermediate step is quite time consuming and HDD intensive and I would love to be able to instruct orthanc to anonymize a patient and then forward the data directoy to another Orthanc instance without saving it first.

best wishes
Martin Krämer

2

Hi Martin,

If it is ok for you to anonymize instance by instance, you could avoid one read-write cycle by:

  • calling /anonymize at the instance level → the response is an anonymized DICOM file (not stored on disk)
  • call /modalities/…/store-straight with the anonymized instance as the body (avoid reading from disk)

If you are using python and ok to anonymize instance by instance, there’s a “power user” solution in which you can use the ReceivedInstanceCallback to:

  • perform anonymization by yourself (using pydicom)
  • call /modalities/…/store-straight with the anonymized instance as the body
  • return ReceivedInstanceAction.DISCARD to tell Orthanc not to store the file at all
    This solution involves no writing/reading on disk at all.

Hope this helps,

Alain.

3

I guess it should be possible to react on a StablePatient by getting a list of all associated instances and then iterating over all instances to anonymize and forward instance by instance. It will require a lot of additional scripting and logic to keep anonymized IDs and UIDs, etc. consistent between associated studies and series though. I will look into it at and see if it makes sense for my application. Thanks!

4

I tried this, ReceivedInstanceCallback, for my own purpose and that works great.

Just wondering if there is a way to get the Incoming AET in the callback, similar to what is done for origin:

e.g. if origin == orthanc.InstanceOrigin.REST_API:

  • origin is apparetnlty 1-6.
    UNKNOWN = 1
    DICOM_PROTOCOL = 2
    REST_API = 3
    PLUGIN = 4
    LUA = 5
    WEB_DAV = 6

I would like to be able to detect the AET or some other parameter specific to the device so that I can pre-process the instance a little before it is actually stored.
This tag: 0008,1010 (StationName): G-scan Brio MRI, 0008,1010*,* which is available from the data.StationName ? might actually work as well, so I could try that if the AET is no readily available.
Very useful feature though.

5

Hi,

No, the AET is not available in this callback.
Indeed you should be able to use StationName, Manufacturer, ModelName, … to “detect” where the image is coming from and perform custom processing.

HTH

Alain.