Terminologia Anatomica (1998)

Terminologia Anatomica First Edition (TA1)

Terminologia Anatomica: In Outline Form

These files contain anatomic terms developed by the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists. (IFAA)

Efforts to develop a universally accepted vocabulary to label the parts of the human body go back to the late nineteenth century. A list that appeared in 1895 (Basle Nomina Anatomica) was intended to serve as a worldwide official standard vocabulary. International groups of anatomists have been working on refining and promoting this vocabulary ever since.

A Federative Committee on Anatomical Terminology (FCAT), with members from anatomic societies all over the world, has taken charge of these efforts over the last few decades. In 1998 a book, Terminology Anatomica, was published containing all the accumulated official Latin terms and their English equivalents. This data populates the application and outlines available on this page.

In 2019 a second edition of Terminologia Anatomica (TA2) was prepared. This was distributed as a digital document on the Web rather than as a hardcover book. Its data supplants this earlier effort from 1998. I am retaining the access to the 1998 terminology here for several reasons including, historical, foreign language implementations and compatibility with RAAViewer. My own modern application to access the terms of TA2 is available elsewhere on this website - Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2).

For those specifically interested in the first edition of Terminologia Anatomica, TAViewer is a web-based anatomy atlas term viewer developed by the Open Anatomy Project at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. It uses data from Terminologia Anatomica (1998) and cross-references TA98 terms with data from Wikipedia and Wikidata - TAViewer. This resource provides an online hierarchical listing of the terms from TA1 similar in functionality to the application and outline formats provided on this page.

Sadly, I am not a member of any association of anatomists. My own interest is sparked by my career as a radiologist, and my efforts in the development of RAAViewer which took advantage of the FICAT work. The applications and files I have created, and which have been made available on this page, derive from the publications of FICAT. They are not official. Producing them is complicated, and they doubtless contain errors which I am trying to squash over time. (When you find any such errors, please write me so they can be fixed.)

Individual international anatomic societies were encouraged to create parallel lists in their own language. This does not seem to have been hugely successful. Such efforts require an enormous amount of work, and I cannot find such lists for most languages. I have been able to find listings that partial accomplish this task in French, Spanish and Japanese. (see Wikipedia entry on Terminology Anatomica) This work has been incorporated in some of the files I have made available on this page.

Every anatomic term is linked to a 12 character code (for example A04.5.02.022). These codes are a little awkward. There is some logic implicit in the format of these codes which guides some of the hierarchical arrangement of my files as well as those provided by FICAT, but there do not seem to be very complete, firm rules to be derived from the formatting. The codes were originally developed at a time that the primary output was in the form of a printed book rather than a digital document. The codes are not ideal for digital realm, but they are what is available.

Using the left sidebar, you can download the Macintosh application that allows you to peruse the terms of Terminologia Anatomica in outline form. The Macintosh application allows searching for any word in the listing.

OmniOutliner

OmniOutliner is a premier outlining program for the Macintosh & iOS. For users of that program on the iPad and iPhone, I have created files in that format which are available for download on this page.

These files could also be used on the Macintosh, but for the Macintosh user, the dedicated Macintosh application is generally superior.

Abbreviation Guide

Screenshots

Part of the icon design incorporated work from this site.