hello all this is dr alsup and in this learning objective video we will be discussing
the anatomical planes which is exactly what our learning objective says so let's get right into it
many of the anatomical descriptions that we discussed in the previous video are really
based on these four imaginary anatomical planes so we will discuss each one of these four right here
starting with the median plane because i think the median plane is one of the more intuitive
ones to understand and this is a vertical plane you can see this right here is the median plane
kind of just see it kind of going through this region right here
the median plane is a vertical plane that passes longitudinally through the midline
of the body so it's actually defining what the midline of the head the neck and the trunk is
the term midline is often used interchangeably with the median plane but that isn't exactly right
because think about it when you consider the midline of say the upper and the lower limbs
that's not quite it sagittal planes will pass through the body parallel to the median plane
so you can have multiple sagittal planes just as long as they're parallel to the median
you will sometimes hear the term parasagital but really any sagittal plane is parallel
to the median plane so para is really just an added and unnecessary prefix
but this doesn't mean you won't hear it and you may also hear the term paramedian which is
which is any sagittal plane that is kind of near or particularly near to the median plane
so i'd argue that the sagittal plane that we're looking at here is actually
could be considered paramedian in anatomy we will just use the term sagittal but wanted
to introduce parasagittal and paramedian in case you hear it in other clinical contexts
the frontal or coronal planes will run at right angles to the median planes i
think that medium plane is running through here and so your frontal plane is running
at right angles to that median plane the frontal plane will divide the body or the frontal planes
will divide the body into anterior and posterior parts or front and back parts
so you can see that this would be more anterior back here and this would be most more posterior
there is a cranial suture that actually runs right about hereish called the coronal suture
so think crown of the head and so that's where that coronal those two names mean the same thing
lastly the only horizontal planes are the aptly named horizontal or transverse
planes which will run at right angles to both the frontal and the median planes now this particular
image is just showing one transverse plane but you can have them anywhere throughout the body
and this will divide the body into superior and inferior portions and sometimes that superior
portion can be really small in comparison to the inferior portions or vice versa
so you'd have a very large superior portion
here and a really small inferior portion if you're looking at this particular transverse plane
you may hear transverse planes referred to as axial
or transaxial planes particularly in radiology
all right so that should do us regarding the anatomical planes as always we end with
the summary slide that is always a nice concise slide to return to for reference or for studying
thank you for your time and attention and
please always feel free to reach out with any questions have a great day