Anatomy of the Oral Tongue
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Hello, everyone.
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Sidney Levy here, continuing our discussion of
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the anatomy of the oral cavity and its subsites.
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I'd like to conclude with the oral tongue.
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The oral tongue is the freely mobile
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portion of the tongue and consists of
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lateral borders, a tip, and a dorsum.
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It also has an undersurface,
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but the mucosa overlying the undersurface
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of the tongue is considered with the floor
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of mouth rather than the oral tongue
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when we're talking oral cavity anatomy. It's important
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to remember that the oral tongue is distinguished from
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the base of tongue or the tongue base by a structure
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called the line of the circumvallate papillae.
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So I'd like to start drawing.
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We have our pre-contrast T1 weighted imaging
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in three planes without fat suppression.
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Before I go any further, I'd like to point
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out some pathology, which we're not going
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to discuss in detail in this vignette.
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We have ourselves an oral tongue malignancy,
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which we will discuss the diagnosis and
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staging of in a subsequent vignette.
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But for the moment, I'd like to draw the
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boundaries of the oral tongue for you,
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as well as its parts and relations.
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On the axial projection, you will
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often see a distinction between the
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oral tongue and the base of tongue.
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I'm drawing the whole tongue here at the moment.
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And the reason I'm doing that is because I want
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to show you the line of the circumvallate papillae.
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And we can often see it because
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there's a change in the architecture.
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And it's important to appreciate that the base
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of the tongue is the posterior third of the tongue here.
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That is considered part of the oropharynx
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rather than the oral cavity.
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Whereas the oral tongue is the
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anterior two thirds of the tongue.
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And that's what we're focusing on at the moment.
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In the coronal projection, you'll get one slice of the
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oral tongue here where it meets the floor of the mouth.
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The malignancy, as you may notice,
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is actually involving the floor of the mouth.
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So that's why it's crossing over.
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On the sagittal projection, the oral tongue is easy to
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appreciate and you can often appreciate the line of the
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circumvallate papillae too, which is at this level here.
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You can see there's a slight difference
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between architecture on this side
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and architecture on that side.
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But the oral tongue extends anteriorly
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from the line of the circumvallate papillae
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as far as the junction of the tip of the
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tongue and the undersurface of the tongue.
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It's important to remember that once we deal
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with the undersurface of the tongue, we are
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now talking about floor of mouth mucosa.
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So in summary, the oral tongue is the
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freely mobile anterior two thirds of the
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tongue and it consists of lateral borders.
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A tip and a dorsum, with the undersurface being
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considered part of the floor of the mouth, and the
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posterior third of the tongue is considered the
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tongue base, which is a component of the oropharynx.
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Thank you.
Sidney Levy, PhD, MBBS
Radiologist and Nuclear Medicine Specialist
I-MED
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