Plaque files provide a means of saving customized plaque designs. Plaque files can contain empty plaques, or they can include embedded radionuclide sources (e.g. BEBIG Ru plaques).

Eye Physics recommends file naming conventions to help catagorize and organize your plaque files. For example, the names of plaque files that contain an embedded picture of the plaque face should include in tag '-p'. Pictures help to assure proper plaque selection and placement of radionuclide sources in the plaque.

Plaque files should be stored in the Plaques folder that is found in the Plaque Simulator Data folder. When Plaque Simulator is launched it recursively searches its master data folder for files with the extension '.iplq6'. All folders are parsed except for those whose names are enclosed in parentheses, e.g. (Disabled Plaques). The parentheses instruct PS to ignore that folder for file searching purposes. Version 5 binary files with the extension '.iplq' (created by PS version 5.38 or greater) may be imported. Their parameters MUST then be manually updated using the various PS6 plaque editors, and then the plaques MUST be resaved as version 6 (.iplq6) files. Do NOT use version 5 files for treatment planning until they have been updated and carefully tested. After importing and converting a version 5 file, move it to a folder that is ignored by PS parsing as soon as possible.

All of the plaque files which PS finds in the Plaque Simulator Data folder are listed for quick access in the Plaque Files submenu of the Plaque menu. The list is initially created when PS is launched and can be manually updated if you modify the contents of the Plaque Simulator Data/Plaques folder after launching PS. The Plaque Files submenu organizes the list of plaque files into 5 catagories (COMS, ROPES, BEBIG, Eye Physics and Other) according to the file file naming conventions discussed above.

You can also open a plaque file when the Plaque Window is the frontmost window and then selecting Open Plaque... from the File Menu.