Surrogate Substitution Preserves PHI Detectability: A Multi-Detector Equivalence Study
Structure-preserving de-identification replaces each detected identifier with a realistic same-type surrogate ("Anna S." -> "Maria S.") rather than a tag such as [NAME]. If downstream PHI detectors no longer recognise surrogates, hiding-in-plain-sight protection and second-pass safety nets weaken. We ask: on the spans a de-identifier actually replaced, do detectors find the surrogate as often as the original value? We call this detectability preservation and treat it as a proxy, not a full measure of utility. Our paired protocol (i) scores detectability only on replaced spans, separately from coverage; (ii) runs an identical heterogeneous detector panel on original and transformed text; a...
| Authors | Qiming Bao, Sherry J. H. Feng, Kim Chester Eugenio et al. |
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| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 4 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 14 October 2026 |
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