A dynamic anonymization ChRIS plugin

pl-dyanon is a ChRIS ds plugin which takes CSV-based DICOM selection and rule definition files as input and produces dynamically anonymized DICOM studies as output. The plugin can optionally push results to Orthanc, a remote PACS, or downstream ChRIS workflows.

Abstract

Medical imaging workflows frequently require flexible, rule-driven anonymization that can adapt dynamically to different studies, projects, or data-sharing requirements. pl-dyanon enables scalable, bulk DICOM anonymization driven by external metadata, CSV inputs, and configurable tag-preservation rules.

The plugin integrates with the ChRIS ecosystem, Orthanc servers, and optional PACS endpoints. It supports parallel execution, selective DICOM filtering, image-count–based rules, and optional email notifications upon completion.

Installation

pl-dyanon is a ChRIS plugin, meaning it can run from either within ChRIS or the command-line.

Local Usage

To get started with local command-line usage, use Apptainer (a.k.a. Singularity) to run pl-dyanon as a container:

apptainer exec docker://fnndsc/pl-dyanon dyanon [--args values...] input/ output/

To print its available options, run:

apptainer exec docker://fnndsc/pl-dyanon dyanon --help

Examples

dyanon requires two positional arguments: a directory containing input data, and a directory where to create output data. First, create the input directory and move input data into it.

mkdir incoming/ outgoing/
mv some.dat other.dat incoming/
apptainer exec docker://fnndsc/pl-dyanon:latest dyanon [--args] incoming/ outgoing/

Development

Instructions for developers.

Building

Build a local container image:

docker build -t localhost/fnndsc/pl-dyanon .

Running

Mount the source code dyanon.py into a container to try out changes without rebuild.

docker run --rm -it --userns=host -u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
    -v $PWD/dyanon.py:/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/dyanon.py:ro \
    -v $PWD/in:/incoming:ro -v $PWD/out:/outgoing:rw -w /outgoing \
    localhost/fnndsc/pl-dyanon dyanon /incoming /outgoing

Testing

Run unit tests using pytest. It's recommended to rebuild the image to ensure that sources are up-to-date. Use the option --build-arg extras_require=dev to install extra dependencies for testing.

docker build -t localhost/fnndsc/pl-dyanon:dev --build-arg extras_require=dev .
docker run --rm -it localhost/fnndsc/pl-dyanon:dev pytest

Release

Steps for release can be automated by Github Actions. This section is about how to do those steps manually.

Increase Version Number

Increase the version number in setup.py and commit this file.

Push Container Image

Build and push an image tagged by the version. For example, for version 1.2.3:

docker build -t docker.io/fnndsc/pl-dyanon:1.2.3 .
docker push docker.io/fnndsc/pl-dyanon:1.2.3

Get JSON Representation

Run chris_plugin_info to produce a JSON description of this plugin, which can be uploaded to ChRIS.

docker run --rm docker.io/fnndsc/pl-dyanon:1.2.3 chris_plugin_info -d docker.io/fnndsc/pl-dyanon:1.2.3 > chris_plugin_info.json

Intructions on how to upload the plugin to ChRIS can be found here: https://chrisproject.org/docs/tutorials/upload_plugin