Applying dicomedit anonymization scripts to pre-existing data on XNAT.

[Gillian LeBlanc]

Hello XNAT community! 

Our group has implemented a project-level DicomEdit script on XNAT, which anonymizes DICOM tags as the MRI files are archived. However, we would also like to apply this anonymization script to data that has already been archived. In the past, it seems like this was possible via DicomBrowser, which is now unsupported on XNAT. 

Have any of you anonymized data that is already archived in an XNAT project? What is the cleanest way to go about this (forcing a manual re-archive by renaming data, running DicomEdit via the Container Service, etc). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

We are using XNAT version 1.10.0 and the DicomEdit script is written using version 6.6. 

Best, 

Gillian LeBlanc

[Moore, Charlie]

Hi Gillian,

In the past, we've sometimes solved this in operations by writing a script to rename sessions and then restore the original name. These days, I think that doesn't rerun project anonymization by default, so you'd have to turn it on specifically.

One of the most important things in a scenario like this is to carefully think through what your requirements are for the end state of things. When XNAT runs what we'd call "post-archive anonymization" from a trigger like this of relabeling, it will (re)run DicomEdit on the DICOM instances, but it does not touch data that has already been extracted from the DICOM and stored in the session's XML. If your anonymization process needs to change data like this, you'd want to re-upload the data and go through the full archive process again with your new script in place.

Thanks,

Charlie

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From: xnat_di...@googlegroups.com <xnat_di...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gillian LeBlanc <gillian...@brown.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2026 10:49 AM
To: xnat_discussion <xnat_di...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [XNAT Discussion] Applying dicomedit anonymization scripts to pre-existing data on XNAT.

 

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