E.3.7 Retain Patient Characteristics Option
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### E.3.7 Retain Patient Characteristics Option

Physical characteristics of the patient, which are descriptive rather than identifying information per se, are recognized as having a potential for leakage of identity because they constrain the number of possible individuals that could be the imaging subject, though only if there is access to other information about the individuals concerned to match it against.

However, there are applications that require such physical characteristics in order to perform the computations necessary to analyze the images to fulfill the objective. One such class of applications is those that are related to metabolic measures, such as computation of PET Standard Uptake Values (SUV) or DEXA or MRI measures of body composition, which are based on body weight, body surface area or lean body mass.

When this Option is specified in addition to an Application Level Confidentiality Profile, information about age, sex, height and weight and other characteristics present in the Attributes shall be retained, as described in Table E.1-1.

The manner of cleaning of retained attributes shall be described in the Conformance Statement.

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E.3.6 Retain Longitudinal Temporal Information Options | Home | E.3.8 Retain Device Identity Option