Anatomical Planes

Dissection. Whether that be of a frog, human, mouse, or velociraptor, we've all been presented with the idea of dissecting a specimen for scientific research. Something that you all need to be familiar with, is the various ways that one can separate parts of the body for observation, research, and a better understanding of internal structures and their placement.

A "plane" according to Connie Allen and Valerie Harper in their Anatomy and Physiology laboratory manual is a "flat surface that divides the body or organs, in order to expose internal structures." Click on the following link, to review directional terms, and then look through some introductory information on the different anatomical planes and their titles:
Anatomical Planes Overview
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Think about the various anatomical planes you just read about, and compose a list of purposes that the division could serve, one for each of the following: Sagittal (either Mid or Para is fine), Frontal, Transverse, and Oblique. What you'll find is that it is extremely helpful to have these different planes, in order to observe different internal structures and glands of the body.



Just as a brief overview, we'll look at three of the planes present in this picture.
The first to discuss is the plane that is separating the person's front half from his back half. Just thinking about the two parts that are created (front and back), it's fairly easy to remember that this is called a frontal plane. The next one is the plane separating left and right sections of the body. There isn't a cute way to remember this, so just know that it indicates a sagittal plane. Now, the tricky part is that there are two types of sagittal planes; what's nice is that they're easy to distinguish. Mid literally means middle, so midsagittal is almost impossible to forget, because it splits someone right down the middle, into equal right and left halves. Parasagittal, on the other hand, splits the individual into unequal halves. So, midsagittal is a middle slice, while parasagittal incorporates whatever other L/R division is possible. Lastly, the one horizontal plane in this image is the transverse plane. A colleague of mine once said that transverse planes "transform" a human into a centaur which is an adorable way to remember that the cut is a horizontal one, however, transverse planes are not always at the waist, so be careful to remember that.
Note, the other plane that is important to know is the oblique plane. This plane passes through the body at an angle. Conveniently enough, anyone who works out regularly knows that most exercises which are meant to train your obliques involve bending at some angle, so it's intuitive to a handful of people. For the rest of you, you've read it, so remember it. (: