CT Abdomen (Axial) - Video Lesson

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. This sectional anatomy tutorial is on CT imaging of the abdomen. In this lesson, we'll be looking at the axial plane. In this first slice, we're looking at the most superior end of the abdominal cavity. There's a few important structures that we should be able to recognize right away. First, we'll notice very large hard organ in the right upper quadrant. This is obviously the liver. The liver is sometimes larger than people expect it to be, but that is the lever filling almost the entire right upper quadrant. On the left side of the abdomen, we can see some other important structures. This very bright area here is actually the patient's stomach. This is the stomach in the left upper quadrant exactly where we would expect the stomach to be. The reason it's bright white is because this patient received oral contrast. It may have been barium, may have been iodine, but either way it causes the patient's intestinal cavities to light up bright white on CT imaging. Few other structures that we should notice right away, on the posterior border of the patient's abdomen, we can actually see the