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Human Body Study

Anatomical planes

The body is described as if cut by three imaginary planes, each at right angles to the other two. These planes are the standard way to specify cross-sections — every MRI slice, CT scan, and textbook diagram is taken along one of them.

The three anatomical planes A schematic of the three anatomical planes — frontal (coronal), sagittal, and transverse — drawn as three transparent parallelograms intersecting in 3D around a small standing figure. Each plane is labelled and tagged with what it divides. The three anatomical planes Each view of the body looks at one plane edge-on and the other two face-on. Frontal plane (coronal — divides front/back) Sagittal plane (divides left/right) Transverse plane (divides top/bottom)

The three planes

Section titled “The three planes”
  • Frontal plane (also called coronal) — vertical, side-to-side; divides the body into anterior (front) and posterior (back) halves.
  • Sagittal plane — vertical, front-to-back; divides the body into left and right halves. The midsagittal (or median) plane cuts exactly down the midline; any other parallel cut is a parasagittal plane.
  • Transverse plane (also called axial or horizontal) — horizontal; divides the body into superior (upper) and inferior (lower) halves.

How the views relate to the planes

Section titled “How the views relate to the planes”

Each of the three orthogonal views faces one plane head-on:

Key idea

Section titled “Key idea”

Three perpendicular planes are enough to locate any point in the body unambiguously — which is why every imaging modality, every dissection convention, and every directional term ultimately reduces to them.