Operation

Importing files

Import DICOM Files either individually or as a directory.
When selecting individual files, the default suffix is .dcm but this can be changed using the file selection dialog options.

When selecting a directory, all files in that directory and it's sub-directories will attempt to be imported.

Be a valid DICOM file (as per the DICOM standard) with valid File Meta Information including DICOM preamble in file header.
Contain the attributes:

Storage class must match one of the storage classes set for the project. (see Modalities & Storage Classes in Help/Project Settings)
Successfully have its PHI captured
Not imported before, ie. SOPInstanceUID not stored in Anonymizer datastore.

If a file fails the conditions above it will be Quarantined in the storage directory, ie. for the first 4 cases respectively:

If a file has already been imported it will be ignored.
The file import dialog displays the outcome of each file import on each line in its scrollable text box.
If a file is successfully imported it will show an abridged file path followed by PHI Patient ID => Anonymized Patient ID as shown in screenshot below.
If there is any error it will display an abridged file path followed by a suitable error message on the next line, as shown in screenshot below.

On the dashboard click the Query button to first send a DICOM echo to the remote server and if successful, open the Query, Retrieve & Import View.

A remote DICOM server can be queried to list matching studies in the Query results view using one or a combination of the standard query fields:

Patient Name: Alphabetic characters with and without accents, digits, ^ separator, ? for single character wildcard, * for string wildcard
Patient ID: ASCII characters and digits, ? for single character wildcard, * for string wildcard
Modality: Drop down list box with the modalities as configured in Project Settings
Study Date: Specific data or date Range with format YYYYMMDD-YYYYMMDD
Accession No.(s): ASCII characters, digits and "/-_,." ? for single character wildcard, * for string wildcard

A comma delimited list can be entered into Accession No.(s) to perform multiple searches.
Bulk Accession Number search via the Load Accession Numbers button and a text file with suffix ".txt" or ".csv" containing a comma or carriage return delimited list.
The Show Imported Studies switch at the top right controls whether imported studies are included in the search result list.
Only studies containing modalities set for the project will be displayed and available for selection.

Studies can be selected individually (mouse click), in groups (hold down CMD or CTRL key) or in bulk using the Select All button.
De-select studies by individual clicking or using the Clear Selection button.
Before importing studies choose which level (Study, Series, Instance) to use for the import process (via DICOM C-MOVE) from the drop down, Move Level.
Clicking the Import and Anonymize button will initiate the Import Studies Dialog.
The remote server will first be queried for each selected study to compile a Study UID Hierarchy corresponding to the selected move level.
The import will then be initiated and the Import Studies Dialog will display a progress bar tracking the number of images imported out of the study hierarchy.
The import process will finish once all studies have been requested and either all files in a study received or a timeout occurred.
If the remote server does not respond within the project's timeout setting: Network Timeout for each file transfer the import process for this study is terminated.
The Import Studies Dialog will show the result of the import process when complete as shown in the screenshot below:
After closing the Import Studies Dialog using the Close button the successfully imported studies will be highlighted green in the Query Results view as shown below:

If the import process fails to import all the studies successfully, adjust the Network Timeout and Move Level and try again by clicking the import button.
The Anonymizer has been designed to handle C-MOVE non-compliant DICOM servers, especially VNAs which operate in asynchronous mode with unknown priority and timeout settings.

On the dashboard click the Export button to first send a DICOM echo to the remote server and if successful, open the Export View.

The Export view operates in similar way to the Query view, where imported & anonymized Patients can be selected for exporting either to a remote DICOM server or an AWS S3 bucket.
Patients may contain multiple studies that were imported independently by the import process.
Before sending a file, the Anonymizer will check with the remote server (SCP or AWS) whether it already been sent and not re-send it.
The export status will be shown in real-time on the export view.
The Date & Time of a successful Patient export and a progress bar is displayed as shown in the screenshot below:

A patient lookup file which contains the project's PHI data can be created at anytime during a project using the Create Patient Lookup button on the Export View.
The PHI data file is saved in CSV format to the storage directories private sub-directory here:
/private/phi_export/
The format of the lookup file follows the JAVA Anonymizer index file with the following fields appended to each study row: Number of Series, Number of Instances

The project dashboard displays relevant project metrics related to the currently curated dataset in the storage directory.
The Query and Export Views are launched from the dashboard using the corresponding buttons.
The number of files waiting in the Anonymizer queue to be anonymized by an anonymizer worker thread is shown at the bottom left of the dashboard.
The status of an operation initiated from the menu or dashboard is shown at the bottom right of the dashboard.