Vendor private group scrub

Remove all vendor-specific private DICOM tags.

Problem

DICOM files from commercial scanners (Siemens, GE, Philips) contain vendor-specific private tags — blocks of data embedded in odd-group DICOM elements that are not part of the standard DICOM dictionary. These private blocks can contain technician notes, patient demographics cached from the scanner console, or institutional codes. They survive standard metadata anonymization because anonymization profiles typically only target standard (even-group) DICOM tags. You need to scrub all private tags from all vendors.

Steps

1. Open a file with vendor private tags (⌘O) — use a Siemens DICOM file (e.g. sample-siemens.dcm) that contains the SIEMENS MEDCOM HEADER private block.

2. Verify private tags are present — switch to Edit mode (⌘3), filter for MEDCOM, and confirm the SIEMENS MEDCOM HEADER row is visible in the metadata tree.

3. Switch to Anon mode (⌘2) and enable private tag scrubbing:

   • Toggle Scrub private tags to ON
   • Select the scrub_all policy from the private mode dropdown

4. Apply the anonymization.

5. Verify removal — switch to Edit mode (⌘3), filter for MEDCOM again. The SIEMENS MEDCOM HEADER row should be completely gone — not blanked, but removed from the dataset entirely.

Result

Applying scrub_all deletes every odd-group (private) element from all instances regardless of vendor — the Siemens MEDCOM header, for example, no longer appears in the tree — while standard tags still follow your chosen anonymization profile. File size drops by the amount of private data removed.