Abstract
This study was designed to re-examine the same soft palates studied qualitatively in a pre vi ous investigation (Kuehn and Kahane, 1990), using a true-color image analysis system. The quan ti fied measures of the areas of specific tissue types are reported. The results indicate that: (1) ten di nous tissue is prominent an te ri or ly and comprises about 10% of total tissue in that region, (2) the relative proportion of glandular and connective tissue is fair ly uniform across the length of the soft palate averaging 22% and 36% respectively, (3) muscle tissue shows a pattern of in creas ing then decreasing amount from anterior to posterior with a maximum proportion of 23% in the midportion of the soft palate, (4) adipose tissue comprises 22% of total tissue area in the an te ri or segment and 17% of total tissue area in the posterior segment of the soft palate, (5) other tissue, primarily ep i the li um and vascular tissue, was found to be fairly constant anteriorly and increased in relative pro por tion to almost 30% of the total tissue area at the uvular base. The functional implications of these find ings are discussed.

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