Plan Approval is a mechanism whereby users can “lock” a plan to prevent further edits or changes once it has been reviewed by a qualified radiation therapy professional (typically a licensed Radiation Oncologist). It should also be noted that before users are able to order blocks or boluses in the ElectronRT app, the plan for those parts must be approved by a user with the 'Plan Approval' permission. This action ensures parts are not ordered for plans that have not been properly reviewed.

Approved plans differ from unapproved plans in the following ways:

1. They are read only and no treatment plan data can be changed
2. The plan dose and hardware devices are no longer being recomputed in the UI as during approval those items are saved to the patient disk storage to ensure they never change from how they were viewed at the time of approval.
3. The Ordering and Plan QA blocks are enabled

Note, Plans can not be unapproved.

Fig. 1: Plan selection with no approvals

When a user goes to select a plan for a course for their patient, they will be able to tell if the plan is approved or not. Plans that are green are approved while unapproved plans are the standard blue. Approved plans also state the time they were approved and by which user in order to maintain integrity with the plan.

Fig. 2: Plan selection with an approved plan

In order to approve a plan a user must simply open the plan they wish to approve and select the “Approve” option inside the General Block.

NOTE: The option will not appear in the following situations:

• The user does not have permission to approve plans
• The plan has no valid beams or there are un-handled errors with the existing beams
• The plan does not have valid dose

In any of these cases the general block will look as such:

Fig. 3: Approval option hidden

After logging in with an appropriate user and opening a plan that is ready for approval you should see the option available in the general block.

Fig. 4: Approval option available

After selecting to approve a plan a user must confirm their selection. They will also have a final opportunity to change the Name and/or Description for the final plan.

Fig. 5: Import Directory Input

When that is completed all users on this environment should see the plan as approved (see Figure 2).