Plan Templates are a powerful feature of Astroid that can greatly reduce the time spent in creating high quality treatment plans. In a simple sense, a Plan Template is just a starting point that can be used when creating new treatment plans for this or other patients. When a Plan Template is applied during new plan creation (see here for creating a new plan), all user specified plan parameters from the template are copied into the new plan. In essence you are applying the plan to a new set of images and structures, therefore it is important that structure names and other data are consistent in your Patient Models when using Plan Templates.

Plan Templates can be defined globally at the site level for all users at your institution and each user is also free to create their own private list of user level Plan Templates. A Plan Template can be easily created from any existing plan by opening the General/History block. At the bottom of this block the user may then choose either Save as User Plan Template or Save as Site Plan Template. The user then provides name for the Template and fills in any description information as desired.

When saving an existing plan as a template, there are a few rules/tips that should be kept in mind which will help make your templates easier to use in the future:

• In order for templates to work well there needs to be consistency in use of structure names (e.g.- Brainstem consistently labeled Brainstem, not brainstem, Brain stem, brain_stem etc.). Note that proper and consistent use of Site Structure Templates is a great way to ensure this is adhered to by all users.
• Most Astroid Plan parameters reference data that will change properly when applied to a new Patient Model using a Plan Template, however, care should be taken when using Explicit Points as these include fixed coordinate values that they may not transfer as desired from plan to plan. avoiding the use of Explicit Points is the best practice for Plan Templates, but if they must be used be sure to check each explicit point in the new plan after applying a template.
• Plan Templates are specific to the Site Structure Template used by the Patient Model; therefore if a template is created for a prostate patient, for example, that template will not show up for a breast patient due to the Site Structure Template selection being different.
• Keep in mind that a Plan Template can be created to any level of completion desired within the planning process. For example, a simple template could be created that adds only a few planning structures (e.g. rinds, expansions, etc) or a complex template could be saved that includes all plan data including the full optimization constraints and objectives. Different disease sites may lend themselves to different levels of detail in the Plan Template so users are encouraged to explore different options to determine what works best for their clinical workflow.

Plan Templates are applied when creating a new plan:

1. Click on the blue Add Plan link under the Patient Model to create a new plan
2. From the Base Plan drop down menu choose the Plan Template that should be used and then click OK
3. Open the new plan and check that all plan parameters have been applied as expected (pay special attention to explicit points as described above)
4. Make any changes necessary within plan and then proceed with planning from this starting point
5. If used well, you should be able to review the plan, make a few minor edits, and be at the point of running feasibility & optimization much faster than when starting from scratch