Patient movement and motion artefacts in cone beam computed tomography of the dentomaxillofacial region: a systematic literature review.

OBJECTIVES To undertake a systematic review on the current knowledge regarding patient movement detection and patient motion artefacts related to cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging of the dentomaxillofacial region. METHODS The MEDLINE (PubMed) bibliographic database was searched for a period up to June 2015 for studies evaluating patient movement and/or motion artefacts in CBCT. The search strategy was restricted to English language publications using the following combined terms: (movement OR motion) AND (CBCT OR cone beam CT). RESULTS The search strategy yielded eight publications, which qualitatively or quantitatively evaluated patient movement and/or patient motion artefacts in CBCT. CONCLUSIONS The literature suggests that patient movement usually presents itself in CBCT images as stripe-like and ring-like patterns, double bone contours, and overall lack of sharpness. Studies monitoring patients during CBCT examination reported a prevalence of movement in approximately 20% of the cases, and studies based on image artefact recognition to define patient movement reported prevalence as high as 41.5%. There seems to be a consensus on the fact that young patients (children and adolescents) often move during the examination.