DICOM Anonymizer (De-identify .dcm)
Remove patient data (PHI) from DICOM files. The image stays identical; the output is a valid .dcm with all identifiers, dates, physician and institution details and private tags stripped by default.
Complete the security check to begin
Every file is de-identified by default. No configuration is required.
The output is a still-valid DICOM file with the image untouched and the identifying header data removed — patient name, ID, birth date, study and acquisition dates, physicians, institution, device serial and free-text comments, plus every private tag. The one exception is text a scanner may have burned directly into the picture, which is part of the image itself and cannot be removed automatically.
De-identify a DICOM scan — keep the image, drop the patient data
Unlike converting to an image, this keeps the file as a valid .dcm so it still opens in any DICOM viewer — it simply no longer carries the patient’s identity. It follows the DICOM PS3.15 Basic Confidentiality Profile and marks the file as de-identified. Everything is processed in memory and deleted the instant your download is ready.
About the DICOM Anonymizer
A DICOM (.dcm) file is not just a medical image — its header stores a large block of Protected Health Information: patient name, ID, birth date, sex, the study and acquisition dates, the referring and performing physicians, the institution, the scanner’s serial number and often free-text comments. Sharing a raw .dcm for teaching, research, a second opinion or a bug report therefore leaks the patient’s identity along with the picture.
This tool returns a new, still-valid DICOM file with the image completely unchanged but the identifying header data removed. It follows the DICOM PS3.15 Basic Confidentiality Profile: direct identifiers are blanked, optional identifying elements are deleted, every date, time and person-name field is cleared, all private (vendor-specific) tags — a notorious hiding place for PHI — are stripped wholesale, and the study/series/instance UIDs are replaced with fresh random values so the file cannot be matched back to the originating system. The raw file preamble is zeroed and the file is flagged with PatientIdentityRemoved = YES.
Common use cases
- Sharing a scan for a teaching file, conference talk or textbook without exposing the patient
- Sending a case to a colleague for a second opinion
- Preparing imaging data for a research dataset or an AI/ML training set
- Attaching a .dcm to a support ticket or vendor bug report
- Publishing an interesting case to a medical forum
Tips for best results
- The image pixels are never altered — de-identification only touches the metadata, so diagnostic quality is preserved exactly.
- The one thing no tool can remove automatically is text a scanner has "burned into" the image pixels themselves (some ultrasound and secondary-capture images overlay the name on the picture, and a few legacy files hide overlay bits inside the pixel data). If your scan shows a name on the picture, it will remain — crop it out before sharing.
- Because private tags are removed entirely, some vendor-specific processing hints may be lost; the standard clinical image and its display settings are kept.
- Output stays a fully valid .dcm, so it opens in any DICOM viewer just like the original.
Why Choose PrivConvert?
Unlike other online converters that upload your files to remote servers, store them for days, and may use them for AI training or sell your data, PrivConvert was built with privacy as the foundation. Here's what makes us different:
Files are processed in volatile memory (RAM) and immediately purged. Nothing is ever written to disk or backed up.
All uploads and downloads are encrypted with TLS 1.3. Your files cannot be intercepted in transit.
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