Specifications about the size of healthy salivary glands are not available to date. Therefore, we determined the size of the submandibular and the parotid glands by ultrasonography in 50 subjects (25 men, 25 women, mean age 45 y, range 20-68) with no history of disease affecting the salivary glands. The subjects were equally distributed concerning gender and age. Body weight did not differ more than 20% from the ideal weight following Broca's formula (mean body weight 71 kg, range 46-95 kg). In the submandibular glands we found an anterior-posterior length of 35 mm f 5.7 mm, a paramandibular dimension to the depth of 14.3 mm +-2.9 mm and a dimension in frontal scanning of 33.7 mm + 5.4 mm. The parotid glands were measured 46.3 mm + 7.7 mm in the axis parallel to the mandibular ramus and 37.4 mm + 5.6 mm in the transverse1 axis. The dimension of the parotid parenchyma was measured with 7.4 mm f 1.7 mm lateral to the mandible and 22.8 mm + 3.6 mm dorsal to the mandible. No statistically significant difference to the 5%~level was found concerning gender. The dimension of the parotid glands correlated statistically significantly with body weight @ = 0.03). This correlation was not found in the dimension of the submandibular glands. Age did not correlate with the dimension of salivary glands. Results of the submandibular glands were compared with volume measurements of submandibular glands from cadavers. 0 1997 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.