A coronal cut is a slice through the body (or any body part) along a vertical plane that runs from side to side, dividing the structure into a front portion and a back portion. You’ll also see it called a frontal cut or coronal section. It’s one of three standard ways anatomists, surgeons, and radiologists divide the body to describe locations, plan operations, and read imaging scans.
How the Coronal Plane Divides the Body
Imagine a pane of glass passing straight through your body from one ear to the other, slicing you into a front half and a back half. That’s the coronal plane. It runs vertically and is perpendicular to the sagittal plane (which splits you into left and right). Because the plane can be positioned anywhere along the front-to-back axis, there isn’t just one coronal cut. A scan or dissection can produce dozens of coronal slices at different depths, each revealing different structures.
The term “coronal” comes from the Latin word for crown, referencing the coronal suture that runs across the top of the skull from ear to ear in roughly the same orientation as the plane itself.
Coronal vs. Sagittal vs. Transverse
Three standard planes are used to describe anatomy:
- Coronal (frontal): Vertical, side to side. Separates front from back.
- Sagittal: Vertical, front to back. Separates left from right. A midline sagittal cut divides the body into equal halves.
- Transverse (axial): Horizontal, parallel to the ground. Separates top from bottom.
Each plane highlights different relationships between organs, vessels, and bones. When your doctor orders a CT or MRI, the radiologist often reviews images in all three planes to get a complete picture, but certain structures show up better in one orientation than another.
Why Coronal Cuts Matter in Medical Imaging
CT and MRI scanners typically acquire images in the axial (transverse) plane, then software reconstructs coronal and sagittal views from that data. Coronal views are especially useful for organs and structures that span a significant vertical distance, because you can see their full height and side-to-side extent in a single image.
A study in Clinical Radiology found that coronal reconstructions were significantly better than standard axial images for evaluating the liver, kidneys, diaphragm, urinary bladder, lumbar spine, major abdominal blood vessels, hips, and the tissue that supports the intestines (the mesentery). That’s because these structures are either tall, curved, or tucked against the body wall in ways that axial slices alone can miss or distort.
If you’ve ever seen a brain MRI, the coronal slices are the ones where you’re looking at the brain as though the person is facing you. These views are particularly good at revealing structures deep inside the brain: the fluid-filled ventricles, the thalamus, the hippocampus, and the folds of the cerebral cortex from the frontal lobe down to the temporal lobe. Neurologists rely on coronal brain images to evaluate conditions like temporal lobe epilepsy, tumors near the base of the skull, and changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Coronal Cuts in Surgery
In the operating room, a “coronal incision” refers to a specific cut made across the top of the scalp, running from ear to ear behind the hairline. It gives surgeons wide access to the skull, forehead, eye sockets, and nasal bones while keeping the scar hidden in the hair. Neurosurgeons originally developed this approach for craniotomies, but it’s now widely used in craniofacial surgery for reconstructing facial fractures, correcting congenital deformities, performing upper-face bone cuts, harvesting bone grafts, and even cosmetic forehead lifts.
A variation called a hemicoronal incision uses only half the arc (one side of the scalp) when the surgeon needs access to just one side of the face or skull.
Coronal Sections in Lab and Research Settings
In pathology and neuroscience labs, coronal sectioning means physically slicing a tissue specimen along the coronal plane. For brain research, this is one of the most common orientations. Thin coronal slices of a mouse or human brain let researchers map out structures layer by layer, from the frontal cortex all the way back to the brainstem. Modern high-throughput techniques can produce hundreds of serial coronal sections from a single brain, each as thin as 25 micrometers (roughly a quarter the width of a human hair), spaced about 100 micrometers apart.
These sections can then be stained to reveal specific features: myelin sheaths around nerve fibers, particular neurotransmitter-producing cells, or fluorescent tracers injected to map neural connections. The coronal orientation is favored because it displays many key brain regions, including the cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, and hippocampus, in a single slice, making comparisons between specimens straightforward.