Definition of anatomical planes

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi,
I am working on specification of measurements in radiology reports. BSPO many 
usefull classes for anatomical planes and axis which I would like to reuse. 
However I found the following issue:

In human anatomy we have the following three main body planes [1]:
 - sagittal plane: "A sagittal plane, is an anatomical plane which is parallel to the sagittal suture. It divides the body into sinister and dexter (left and right) portions."
 - transverse plane: "A transverse plane is an anatomical plane which devides the body into cranial and caudal (head and tail) portions."
 - coronal plane: "A coronal plane (or frontal plane) is an anatomical plane which divides the body into dorsal and ventral (back and front, or posterior and anterior) portions."

In BSPO we have:
 - 'bspo:sagittal plane': "Anatomical plane that divides a bilateral body into left and right parts, not necessarily of even size."
 - 'bspo:transverse plane': "Anatomical plane that divides body into anterior and posterior parts."
 - 'bspo:horizontal plane': "Anatomical plane that divides bilateral body into dorsal and ventral parts."

Comparison:
 - Defitions of sagittal plane are the same.
 - At Wikipedia [1] I found that (for humans) anterior is the same as ventral and posterior the same as dorsal. I think this is the main issue. Thus (for human anatomy) there is no differnce between 'bspo:transverse plane' and 'bspo:horizontal plane' by their textual definitions in BSPO.
 - A coronal plane is missing in BSPO.

My proposal is to:
 a) change the textal definition of transverse plane to "A transverse plane is an anatomical plane which devides the body into cranial and caudal (head and tail) portions".
 b) add a class 'coronal plane' with definition "A coronal plane (or frontal plane) is an anatomical plane which divides the body into dorsal and ventral parts".

Best regards,
Heiner

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 27 Sep 2014 at 1:39

[ramonawalls]

@megbalk could you please comment on this issue. I think we have dealt with something similar.

[meghalithic]

I agree to keep the transverse plane as it is now, anterior-posterior or ventral-dorsal, as that plane is commonly used by mammalogists, herpetologists, etc.

I worry that horizontal and transverse planes may get confused with one another as they are often drawn as the same plane in anatomy books. Horizontal should be a synonym of transverse - but not cranial-caudal.

I think better would be to add a coronal or frontal plane, which is the cranial (rostral)-caudal or superior-inferior, as it is actually a vertical plane. As mentioned above, cranial-caudal is actually a different axis.