Nalvera Privacy Vault — Free, Open-Source Scan De-Identification

Currently under development. Nalvera Privacy Vault will become available as a free, open source desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Nalvera Privacy Vault is a free, open source desktop app that helps clinicians and researchers prepare CT and MR scans for research use. It runs entirely on your own computer and works fully offline. The app walks you through a simple process: load your scans, choose your privacy settings, let it process everything locally, review what it did, then export the results locally, ready for upload to Nalvera.

macOS Windows Linux Free & open source Fully offline

How it works

Load your CT or MR scans into the app.

Choose your privacy settings — pseudonymisation always runs; face removal, embedded-text removal, and encryption are optional extras you switch on if you need them.

Process locally — everything runs on your own machine. Nothing is uploaded automatically.

Review what the app did before anything leaves your computer.

Export the results locally — ready for upload to Nalvera.AI whenever you choose.

Pseudonymisation

At its core, the app strips out identifying information from the scan's DICOM header — things like the patient's name, patient ID, birth date, referring physician, and the hospital or institution name. It keeps the technical details researchers still need, like the scan date, so you can still track a patient's progress over time. This process is called pseudonymisation.

Keep the mapping file separate. Every export also comes with a separate file that maps the original patient to their new anonymised code. This mapping file is sensitive and should be stored somewhere separate from the scans themselves.

Optional privacy tools

Two extras go further than header pseudonymisation. Both are switched off by default and only run if you turn them on.

Face removal Off by default

Works on head CT and MR scans to strip out facial features, so nobody could reconstruct what the patient looks like from a 3D render of the scan.

Embedded text removal Off by default

Blanks out any text burned directly into the image itself — like a patient name or date stamp sometimes printed onto ultrasound frames or other exported images.

Optional encryption (.nvlt)

Encryption is entirely optional. If you turn it on, the app saves your export as a .nvlt file instead of a regular scan file. A .nvlt file is a locked, encrypted version of the scan that only the Nalvera.AI platform can open. Even if the file were intercepted or accidentally shared along the way, nobody without the platform's private key could read what's inside — protecting the scan from the moment it leaves your computer all the way through to upload. If you don't need that extra layer, leave encryption off and export a regular scan file instead.

.nvlt is a regular accepted input format on Nalvera.AI — you can upload a .nvlt export directly on Submit Job, in Study Design, and in the Interactive Studio. The platform decrypts it automatically before running your chosen AI model. See the documentation for details.

Why it exists

The whole app is built around one idea: privacy-sensitive information should not accidentally leave your computer. It offers easy-to-use pseudonymisation, optional tools like face and embedded-text removal, and the option to encrypt your data from the moment it leaves your machine.

Have questions? See the Privacy Vault FAQ, or contact us.