Estimation of the number of motor unit action potentials in the surface electromyogram

Author

Zhou, Ping ; Rymer, W.Z.

Author_Institution

Biomed. Eng. Dept., Northwestern Univ., Chicago, IL, USA

fYear

2003

fDate

20-22 March 2003

Firstpage

372

Lastpage

375

Abstract

The number of motor unit action potentials (MUAP) appearing in the surface electromyogram (EMG) offers potentially valuable information about both motor unit recruitment and firing rates. In this paper, we seek to evaluate several different surface EMG processing parameters to estimate the number of MUAPs present in standard surface EMG records. Based on the morphological features of surface MUAPs, a series of surface EMG signals were simulated. The relationships between the number of MUAPs in the simulated surface EMG and the different kinds of surface EMG processing parameters were derived to evaluate their performance for MUAP number estimation. The results indicate that the parameters based on turns, spikes or zero-crossings counting are suitable for MUAP number estimation.

Keywords

electromyography; mathematical morphology; medical signal processing; neurophysiology; MUAP; MUAP number estimation; firing rates; morphological features; motor unit action potentials; motor unit recruitment; spikes counting; standard surface EMG records; surface EMG processing parameters; surface electromyogram; turns counting; zero-crossings counting; Dispersion; Electrodes; Electromyography; Fault detection; Gaussian distribution; Muscles; Recruitment; Surface discharges; Surface morphology; Surface waves;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Neural Engineering, 2003. Conference Proceedings. First International IEEE EMBS Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7579-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CNE.2003.1196838

Filename

1196838