Terminologia Anatomica (TA98; Thieme, Stuttgart), the successor to Nomina Anatomica as the international standard of human anatomical terminology, was first published as a book in 1998, and was recently reprinted (2011). The anatomical terms were listed according to systemic, topographical and alphabetical rules, which influenced the typography of the book. Every term was given a identifying number (TA code). Image files of every page of the book are freely available on this website since 2010.

Following a decision of the General Assembly of IFAA (CapeTown, August 2009), the Informatics Working Group of FIPAT began developing a knowledge base on terminologies under the direction of Prof. Pierre Sprumont (Fribourg, Switzerland). A hierarchy of the terms was consequently designed by making use of a few logical operators: <is a>, <is part of>, <is branch of>, <is set of>, <is member of>, etc. This intensive and tedious work was performed mainly by Dr. Robert Baud (Geneva, Switzerland) and Prof. Paul E. Neumann (Halifax, Canada) of the Informatics Working Group. Their contributions are gratefully acknowledged.

The on-line TA98, generously hosted by the Université de Fribourg, consists of reports from this knowledge base. These reports include hierarchical and alphabetical indexes, near-facsimile pages of chapters and sections of TA98, individual pages for each entity, and individual pages for the analysis of the form and syntax of the Latin terms. The near-facsimile pages are conservatively corrected, but these corrections and the material added by the Informatics Working Group have not yet been approved yet by FIPAT or IFAA. Therefore the published book remains the international standard of human anatomical terminology.

The navigation of the human anatomical terminology on this website is explained in a Help on navigation document, that details how one can reach any of the Index Pages, Chapter and Section Pages, Entity Pages, Latin pages and Statistics Pages. Help documents for each of the page types are linked from the current page. Most pages on the website have an image of a large light-bulb that serves as a link to the appropriate Help document. In addition, the Documents and resources page is an alternative path to those pages.

In 2020, the website has been refreshed in order to adapt to the awailable technology, mainly HTML5, CSS, Javascript and PHP. But the Content pages were all left unchanged, only the navigation was concerned. This means that all external pointers to the website remains valid.

The TA98 part of the website, as it was created in 2013 and refreshed in 2020, is to be considered as frozen regarding its content. Except possible trivial updates, no change are to be expected in the future. Of course, this left the way open for the publications of different revisions of the terminologies.

User Guide to the TA98 on-line version

• Partial TA codes are used as chapter and section designations.

• If more than one term is listed for an entity, the first term inTerminologia Anatomica is the preferred term. The order of synonyms of the preferred term in the online TA98 may differ from that in the published book because the knowledge base does not rank the synonyms.

• All entries sharing the same TA code are identical in the online TA98 (except gender-specific homologues that share a TA code), even if they differ in the published book in the number of terms, Latin and English preferred terms, synonyms, and presence of gender symbols.

• Seven pairs of non-identical entities erroneously shared TA codes. A list of these inconsistencies, and their resolutions are linked.

• TA codes were created for corpus humanum (human body) [A01.0.00.000], partes corporis humani (parts of human body) [A01.1.00.000], and regiones corporis humani (regions of human body) [A01.2.01.000].

• In the creation of the on-line TA98, obvious errors, e.g., typographical errors, with obvious, simple solutions were corrected. A list of these corrections is linked.

• Several terms have been modified to remove prepositions and conjunctions, or have had their word order changed to remove possible ambiguity. A list of the changes for compliance with the proposed rules for a Regular anatomical terminology (RAT) is linked.

• The directions associated with a few entries (e.g., "vide paginam xxx" and "see page xxx") have been converted into Redirection notes that refer the user to sections of TA98 (using TA codes) because page numbers are irrelevant in the on-line TA98.

• Notes in the on-line TA98 appear in the Footer of TA98 chapter and section pages, and in the Notes section of individual Entity pages.

These notes include:

• the explanatory footnotes from the Thieme edition of TA98,

• correction notes, which explain the error corrections in the on-line TA98 and the changes made to harmonize the entries for entities with multiple entries,

• RAT notes, which explain changes introduced in the on-line TA98 for compliance with the rules of a regular anatomical terminology, and

• Redirection notes, which direct the reader to the main entry for some entities with multiple entries.

• Notes are associated with TA codes. So they may be repeated in irrelevant locations in TA98 chapter and section pages if the TA code is shared by two or more entries.

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