medullary ray

A renal, cortical lobule, consisting of the ascending or descending limbs of the loop of Henle or of the collecting tubules; medullary rays are regions where parallel arrays of straight tubules travel perpendicular to the capsule and extend from the cortex to the medulla. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the medullary ray is

A renal, cortical lobule, consisting of the ascending or descending limbs of the loop of Henle or of the collecting tubules; medullary rays are regions where parallel arrays of straight tubules travel perpendicular to the capsule and extend from the cortex to the medulla. The atlas records it as a organ at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the medullary ray is

It sits in the abdomen and trunk, within the urinary system. Not positioned individually. Drawn inside the structure this dataset says contains it — the containment is asserted, the exact spot within it is not.

What the medullary ray connects to

The atlas records 5 typed relationships for it, across 4 kinds of connection. part of cortex of kidney and renal lobule.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the medullary ray. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as Ferrein's pyramid, kidney medullary ray and renal medullary ray. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0009883, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: cortex of kidney and renal lobule.
• A kind of: organ part.
• contributes to morphology of: cortex of kidney.
• overlaps: nephron tubule.

Questions

Where is the medullary ray?

It sits in the abdomen and trunk, within the urinary system. Not positioned individually. Drawn inside the structure this dataset says contains it — the containment is asserted, the exact spot within it is not.

What does the medullary ray connect to?

Part of: cortex of kidney and renal lobule.

Is the medullary ray the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.