EMG based biofeedback system using a virtual reality method

Surface Electromyography (sEMG) is the process of acquiring EMG signals using surface electrodes for further processing and extracting important features. In this study a hardware system was developed to collect EMG signal from a muscle over the skin. This hardware system processed the signal to remove some undesirable interference signals and amplify the EMG signal. The signal was then converted to a digital form and further processed in a computer. Several computer algorithms were developed to process the collected EMG signals to be used in biofeedback applications. In this work, a muscle effort indication application was developed, which was capable of quantifying the effort of a muscle during a particular muscle activity. This was then used as the control input of a computer game application to make the biofeedback application more interesting for the subject. The performance of the EMG system was validated using a commercial physiological signal acquisition system. The performances of computer applications were also validated using several experiments. The current system has successfully demonstrated that sEMG could successfully be used to provide biofeedback while engaging the subject in an entertaining computer game environment.