MRI: Body Planes and Surfaces - Video Lesson

Hey, everybody. Welcome to today's lesson on the planes and surfaces of the body. This essential topic forms the foundation for understanding patient positioning and scanning in MRI. In this video, we'll cover appropriate medical terminology related to patient positioning, planes of imaging, and body surfaces. Let's take a look. When discussing imaging, anatomic position is the reference position for all planes, surfaces, and directional terms. Anatomic position is an upright position with arms slightly abducted, hands by the sides, palms forward, feet together, head directed straight ahead. This is also a general rule for displaying images as if the patient is facing the viewer in anatomic position. In MRI, patients can be positioned in many ways on the imaging table. How a patient is positioned is dependent on the exam, patient condition, and receiver coil choice. Patient positioning encompasses the