Scope

This standard operating procedure governs every clinical image published on skinoncology.net — clinical photography, dermoscopy, intra-operative photography, histology and radiology.

Consent

Written, informed, documented consent is obtained from the patient (or legal representative) for educational and publication use on a public website.
Consent is obtained using the platform's consent form, which specifies: scope of use (web, print, teaching), duration (indefinite unless withdrawn), and anonymisation.
Patients retain the right to withdraw consent at any time via the contact form; images are removed within 14 days.

Anonymisation

No identifying features visible (eyes, tattoos, distinctive scars unless clinically essential) unless a separate explicit consent is documented.
Metadata stripped before upload.
EXIF data removed by the image pipeline automatically.

Licensing

Original images created by the author are offered under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Third-party images (for example, DermNet) remain under their original licence — typically CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — are used by permission of that licence, and are not re-licensed by this site.
Every image is tagged with licence, credit, consent status and anonymisation confirmation.

Minors and protected groups

Images of minors and other protected groups require parental/guardian consent, heightened anonymisation and author review before publication.

Audit

A quarterly audit confirms every published image has a traceable consent record. Images without a confirmed record are taken down pending resolution.

Image consent & anonymisation