Powerpoint 2002 editing pictures

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I am using Powerpoint 2002 for figures of MRIs for an article in a medical
journal. I need to remove the patient's date of birth from the MRI but do
not know how to go about doing this. Any help would be most appreciated.
 
PowerPoint has very limited picture editing capabilities. Your best bet
is to use a program designed for editing pictures. Also, you need to be
careful about your confidentiality constraints. If you are removing the
birthdates to protect confidentiality, just about anything PowerPoint can
do will not be good enough for the electronic file. In PowerPoint you can
use the cropping tool, or you can cover up the birthdates with a box.
These things would not show the birthdates when printed, but anyone with
access to the electronic file could uncrop or move the box (unless you
export the slide as a picture).

I remember a case a few years ago where some government agency had posted
files to the Internet with certain confidential information blacked out.
Unfortunately, the black boxes could easily be removed revealing the
names that were supposed to be hidden. This wasn't in PowerPoint, but the
same priniciple applies.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/
 
I am using Powerpoint 2002 for figures of MRIs for an article in a medical
journal. I need to remove the patient's date of birth from the MRI but do
not know how to go about doing this. Any help would be most appreciated.
Click to expand...

You can't modify pictures/images in PowerPoint but there are several other
possibilities:

- Insert the MRI image then use a rectangle or other shape drawn in PPT to
cover information you don't want to display.

The information will still be available to anyone who has a copy of the
presentation; if that's not acceptable, take it a step further before
releasing the file:

Select both the image and the rectangle covering the patient info; press
Ctrl+C to make a copy; choose Edit, Paste Special and choose PNG; delete the
original image and rectangle.

That'll give you a single image rather than an image plus rectangle; the
patient info will be permanently obscured.

You can also use an image editing program like PhotoShop, PaintShop, Corel
PhotoPaint etc. to obscure/eliminate the patient info on a copy of the original
MRI image and then insert that into PPT.
 
If you choose the "compress pictures" option on the Picture Toolbar (after
using the cropping tool on the toolbar), you can eliminate the areas of the
cropped picture so it can't be "uncropped."

This may help.
 
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