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.