DICOM log deidentification at trace log-level

General
1

Hello and thank you for your work on Orthanc.

I am verifying the deidentification of logs as described in the Collecting Logs section of the Orthanc Book:

  • Provided that you have left the DeidentifyLogs configuration to its true default value, Orthanc logs will not contain any sensitive patient information.

However, when I have the DICOM log-level set to trace I do see identifying information such as the Patient Name. I have confirmed that I have not changed the default settings and I also have tried explicitly setting DeidentifyLogs to true.

I looked at the source code a bit and it seems that deidentification is implemented by the GetDeidentifiedContent method in ServerContext.cpp:2015. I see that this is called, for instance, in OrthancFindRequestHandler.cpp:359 where logging is at the INFO level.

However, I do not see this called in DicomControlUserConnection.cpp:86 where the log level is TRACE. I don’t know much C++ so I’m having trouble following everything, but from what I can tell, this trace-level log is taking output directly from DCMTK.

My questions:

  1. Is this a correct assessment of what is happening?
  2. If so, is there any way to deidentify these logs?
  3. If there is no way to deideintify these logs, is there a way to change the log file certain log levels are sent to?

Finally, I suggest that the above section of the Orthanc book be edited to make it clear that logs may not be anonymized at certain log-levels. I would be happy to send a patch if it is welcome.

Thanks for your help!

2

Hi Josh,

First of all, thanks for the analysis and detailed report !

I had a quick look to it. Unfortunately, deidentifying the trace level logs is not so straightforward so I have currently just clarified the documentation and added a TODO.

Best regards,

Alain

3

Hi Alain,

Thank you for the confirmation and for the updated documentation. I may take a look at how to implement the deidentification at the trace level, but as I said, I am not so good with C++. Maybe it’s time to learn! :slight_smile:

–Josh