Black-box redaction

Apply opaque black-box redaction over sensitive pixel regions.

Problem

You’ve identified sensitive pixel regions — either through OCR detection or manual inspection — and now you need to apply opaque black-box redaction over those areas. The redaction tool lets you draw rectangular bounding boxes directly on the DICOM image. When exported, those regions are filled with black pixels in the output file.

Steps

Draw a Redaction Box

1. Open your DICOM file (⌘O) and switch to Anon mode (⌘2).

2. Activate the Redact tool — click the black-box redaction tool in the toolbar. The button highlights to indicate the tool is active.

3. Draw a rectangle on the image — click and drag on the Cornerstone viewport canvas:

   • Move the pointer to the top-left of the area you want to redact
   • Press and hold the mouse button
   • Drag diagonally to the bottom-right of the area
   • Release to finalize the rectangle

4. Verify the region is registered — the redaction regions counter updates to show (1). The bounding box is displayed as an overlay on the image.

5. Export — click Apply & Export to write the redacted DICOM file with black-filled regions.

Result

Drawing a rectangle registers one redaction region; dragging past the image edge clamps to its bounds, and a click without a drag is ignored, so the counter only reflects real boxes. Apply & Export writes a valid DICOM with those regions filled black and the surrounding clinical pixels preserved.