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 the block the block the user may then choose either Save as User Plan Template or Save as Site Plan Template The user then label and fill in any description information as needed.

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

• In order for ones templates to work well there needs to be consistency in ones Site Structure Templates, i.e.- Brainstem consistently labeled Brainstem, not brainstem, Brain stem, brain_stem etc.
• When using explicit points in templates be aware that they may not transfer as desired from plan to plan. Please check each explicit point on each plan
• Templates must be validated prior to the creating a new treatment plan to ensure compatibility with the new patient model
• If a template is created for a prostate patient that template will not show up in a breast patient model due to the patient structure model being different
• As a user one can create a template to any level into the planning process they would like- for example if one would like to stop at putting the calculation grid on they may or they may go as far as the optimization process

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 blue OK
3. Open the new plan and check that all plan parameters have been applied as expected
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 within just a few minutes