Artificial intelligence in orofacial myofunctional disorders: a scoping review protocol

This project contains the protocol for a scoping review entitled “Artificial Intelligence in Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders: A Scoping Review Protocol.” The review aims to map the available evidence on the use of artificial intelligence in orofacial myofunctional disorders and related orofacial functions, including breathing, chewing, mastication, swallowing, deglutition, and speech. Artificial intelligence has increasingly been explored in healthcare, rehabilitation, speech-language pathology, digital health, and clinical decision support. However, its specific application to orofacial myofunctional disorders remains unclear and appears to be dispersed across different areas, such as oral motor function, stomatognathic function, orofacial myofunctional therapy, speech production, mastication, breathing, swallowing, wearable technologies, and telerehabilitation. This scoping review will follow the methodological recommendations of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The review will use the Population, Concept, and Context (PCC) framework. The population will include individuals across different life stages, with or without orofacial myofunctional disorders or related orofacial conditions. The concept will be the use of artificial intelligence and related computational methods, including machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, generative AI, large language models, automatic speech recognition, computer vision, predictive models, and AI-assisted rehabilitation systems. The context will include clinical, research, educational, rehabilitation, telehealth, dental, orthodontic, and speech-language pathology settings. The review will identify the types of AI technologies used, the orofacial functions addressed, the populations and clinical contexts studied, the purposes of AI application, the outcomes and performance metrics reported, and the main gaps, limitations, ethical issues, and implementation challenges described in the literature. The findings are expected to provide an overview of current evidence and support future research on safe, ethical, culturally adapted, and clinically meaningful AI integration into orofacial myofunctional assessment, therapeutic planning, rehabilitation, monitoring, patient education, and clinical decision support.