An energy ratio based measure for F-wave backfiring rate estimation

F-wave persistence is a frequently reported parameter for nerve conduction studies. F-wave activities are generated through backfiring of motor neurons. F-wave persistence is designed to estimate the backfiring rate. Through computational models and probability analyses, we demonstrated that the F-wave persistence definition is deficient in providing a robust and consistent estimate of the backfiring rate. We proposed an energy ratio based measure as an alternative to F-wave persistence to estimate backfiring rates. The energy ratio measure is shown to be robust to activity detection threshold and without the ceiling effect suffered by the traditional F-wave persistence.