Including Patients' Pictures in a Manuscript I am going to include some pictures of patients in my manuscript, which will be submitted to a scientific journal for peer review. In order to keep the subjects’ identity and following the data protection act, I need to hide their faces.

My question is to know whether to put a black rectangle over their faces, especially their eyes or pixelising their faces. I have been told that putting a black rectangle is not recommended for this purpose, but I have never been told the reason.

Could somebody please let me know first that:


Which method is better?
Is that the case that blackening the face is not recommended. If true, why?
The BMJ Publishing Group suggests a very simple reason for the change:


  We no longer publish pictures with black bands across the eyes because bands fail to mask someone’s identity effectively. 
  
  We will need the patient to sign our consent form, which requires the patient to have read the article.


If you can "blacken out" the face, then why not just crop it out altogether?