Human Head Axes and Planes

Planes and Axes for the Head are directly derived from the standard anatomical position, or standard anatomical model described in the previous section on the anatomical planes of the human body.. As the colours of the human body used in this previous section are not the same as those used here, the correspondence between the 3 planes and their colour is summarized below:
The three main anatomical planes are:.

• A transverse plane (also known as Axial or horizontal plane) is parallel to the ground; it separates the superior from the inferior (here in blue).
• A coronal plane (also known as frontal plane) is perpendicular to the ground; it separates the anterior from the posterior, the front from the back (here in green).
• A sagittal plane (also known as anteroposterior plane) is perpendicular to the ground, separating left from right.
  

     The median (or midsagittal) plane is the sagittal plane that is exactly in the middle of the head (here in red).

     All other sagittal planes (also known as parasagittal planes) are parallel to it (one of many paragittal planes is shown in yellow).

😱 Warning: The colors used in these figures have NO relationship with the colours of the axes used throughout the PTVR Documentation.

Figure 1: Planes of the head. (image from David Richfield (User:Slashme)When using this image in external works, it may be cited as follows:Richfield, David (2014). "Medical gallery of David Richfield". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.009 SMASH. ISSN 2002-4436., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)	Figure 2: Animation (horizontal rotation) of Figure 1 to help you build a 3D mental image of the head model.

😎 Tip: These planes are also helpful to define the local coordinate systems used for the head in section Global and Local coordinate systems.

Links

Wikipedia contributors. (2022, January 2). Standard anatomical position. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:53, February 21, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Standard_anatomical_position&oldid=1063409930

Wikipedia contributors. (2022, January 30). Anatomical plane. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:25, February 21, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anatomical_plane&oldid=1068939098

Howard, I. P., & Rogers, B. J. (2008). Chapter 15. Binocular correspondence and the horopter. In Seeing in Depth (Vol. 2). Oxford University Press. https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367607.001.0001/acprof-9780195367607-chapter-15