Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2)

Anatomic Terminology

Terminologia Anatomica 2019: 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 International Programme for Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT), with members from anatomic societies all over the world under the umbrella of IFAA, has taken charge of these efforts. FIPAT is a replacement of FCAT which in 1998 published a book, Terminology Anatomica, containing all the approved official Latin terms and their English equivalents.

In 2019 a second edition of Terminologia Anatomica (TA2) was prepared by FIPAT. This is intended to supplant the original compendium. The second edition was not published as a book. Rather the contents were made available in digital format on the Web (see sidebar). The resources on this page access the data of Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2). I created a new Macintosh application for TA2 called TA2019, and it is available for free here. An application for the old (1998) version is available elsewhere on this website - Terminologia Anatomica 1998.

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 FCAT work. The applications and files I have created more recently, which are available on this page, derive from (TA2). 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.)

There is an official on-line version of the terminology which has some advantages. A primary one, of course, is that it is an official product of the committee. On the sidebar you can find a links to the official online application to access the TA2 terms as well as a link to the raw data which is provided as a number of PDFs. The online application presents the terms in a hierarchal format similar to the Macintosh application and the outlines that can be downloaded on this page.

There are advantages to having these terms available in the form of the offline Macintosh application that has been provided here. Obviously an active link to the Internet is not required. When I started work on my application to tackle TA2, it was a followup to what I had already done with the original 1998 version. Midway into the project I became aware of the online application. That was a little discouraging in that my own efforts were now not going to be as unique. Nonetheless, there are differences enough that I continued to completion.

With TA2, every anatomic term is linked to unique digit that reflects the order of the terms in the lexicon. There are a total of 7112 digits spanning from 1 to 7113 (2590 is not assigned). There are a few terms that appear in two locations in TA2 so those particular terms are actually associated with 2 different digits.

Using the left sidebar, you can download the Macintosh application that allows you to peruse the terms of Terminologia Anatomica 2019 (TA2) in outline form. You might notice that there is no manual on this page. The application is simple, and the help explanations are embedded within the program itself.

OmniOutliner

OmniOutliner is a premier outlining program for the Macintosh & iOS. For users of that program on the iPad and iPhone, I have created a file in that format which is available for download on this page and which should work on those devices to show the hierarchical terms. These files could also be used on the Macintosh, but for the Macintosh user, the dedicated Macintosh application is generally superior.

I also prepared the files in a generic outline format (OPML) which should be accessible to a variety of outlines programs. Windows users should be able to access the simple hierarchical list through this route although I do not have personal experience with Windows outline applications.

Abbreviation Guide