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The zipped study file is organized hierarchically by Study UID (top level), Series ID (mid level), and Image Instance ID. The first two levels are directories, named by their IDs. These IDs are produced using DICOM standards, and those who know how to read the IDs can identify what institution, department, machine, and date/time the particular study started, and use the assembled information to narrow down or identify the patient. To prevent this kind of attack, when encryption is chosen, mi2b2 will rename these studies, series, and images. Studie UIDs and Series IDs will be hashed (using the MD5 cryptographic hash function). The hashed value (16-bytes long) is then written out to be a string of 16 hexadecimal numbers (32 characters, 2 characters per 1 hexadecimal number) and pre-pended with "Study-" or "Series-" appropriately and appended with ".encrypted" (1, 2). The image files, on the other hand, are named "Study-num", where num stands for the instance number of that image in its series. The image files are also appended with ".encrypted" (3). This helps the users identify which files appear before which.

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