Dilation (or dilatation) may refer to:

Physiology or medicine

<!--* Dilation, according to the ICD-10-PCS, is the expanding of an orifice or the lumen of a tubular body part. The orifice can be a natural orifice or an artificially created orifice. This is accomplished by stretching a tubular body part using intraluminal pressure or by cutting part of the orifice or wall of the tubular body part. Examples would include percutaneous transluminal angioplasty or pyloromyotomy.-->

  • Cervical dilation, the widening of the cervix in childbirth, miscarriage etc.
  • Coronary dilation, or coronary reflex
  • Dilation and curettage, the opening of the cervix and surgical removal of the contents of the uterus
  • Dilation and evacuation, the dilation of the cervix and evacuation of the contents of the uterus
  • Esophageal dilation, a procedure for widening a narrowed esophagus
  • Pupillary dilation (also called mydriasis), the widening of the pupil of the eye
  • Vaginal dilation, the dilation of the vaginal canal
  • Vasodilation, the widening of luminal diameter in blood vessels

Mathematics

  • Dilation (affine geometry), an affine transformation
  • Dilation (metric space), a function from a metric space into itself
  • Dilation (operator theory), a dilation of an operator on a Hilbert space
  • Dilation (morphology), an operation in mathematical morphology
  • Scaling (geometry), including:
  • Homogeneous dilation (homothety), the scalar multiplication operator on a vector space or affine space
  • Inhomogeneous dilation, where scale factors may differ in different directions

Chemistry and physics

  • Dilation (physics), size increase
  • Thermal expansion of crystalline triglycerides is referred to as dilation
  • Scale invariance, a feature of objects or laws that do not change if length scales (or energy scales) are multiplied by a common factor
  • Time dilation, the observation that another's clock is ticking at a slower rate as measured by one's own clock

Music

  • Dilate (Bardo Pond album)
  • Dilate (Ani DiFranco album)
  • Dilate (musical project), ambient solo project of Vampire Rodents keyboardist Victor Wulf
  • Dilation (album), 2011 album by comedian Rory Scovel
  • Dialate, 1996 song by Linkin Park

See also

  • Dilution (disambiguation)