OCR detect text overlays

Detect burned-in text overlays using OCR and propose redaction boxes.

Problem

DICOM images often contain burned-in text overlays — patient names, hospital IDs, scan dates — rendered directly into the pixel data by the acquisition scanner. Metadata-only anonymization doesn’t touch these pixel-level identifiers. You need to detect and flag these text overlays so they can be redacted from the image before sharing.

Steps

1. Open your DICOM file (⌘O) and switch to Anon mode (⌘2). The Cornerstone viewport shows the image.

2. Trigger OCR detection — click the ⌕ Detect text button in the Anonymization panel. The button text changes to “Scanning…” while the OCR engine processes the current image frame.

3. Wait for scanning to complete — the button reverts to ⌕ Detect text (enabled) when done. This may take a few seconds depending on image complexity.

4. Review the proposals — green bounding-box overlays appear on the image marking detected text regions. The redaction regions counter in the panel updates to show how many regions were detected.

Result

Once the scan finishes, detected text appears as green bounding boxes and the counter increments. These are proposals only — adjust, add, or delete boxes, then click Apply & Export to burn them in. OCR runs on the current frame, so scan each frame of a multi-frame series.