Classification of surface EMG signal with fractal dimension

Surface EMG (electromyography) signal is a complex nonlinear signal with low signal to noise ratio (SNR). This paper is aimed at identifying different patterns of surface EMG signals according to fractal dimension. Two patterns of surface EMG signals are respectively acquired from the right forearm flexor of 30 healthy volunteers during right forearm supination (FS) or forearm pronation (FP). After the high frequency noise is filtered from surface EMG signal by a low-pass filter, fractal di-mension is calculated from the filtered surface EMG signal. The results showed that the fractal dimensions of filtered FS surface EMG signals and those of filtered FP surface EMG signals distribute in two different regions, so the fractal dimensions can rep-resent different patterns of surface EMG signals.

The Change of Spectral Energy Distribution of Surface EMG Signal During Forearm Action Process

Spectral energy distribution of surface EMG signal is often used but difficultly and effectively control artificial limb, because the spectral energy distribution changes in the process of limb actions. In this paper, the general characteristics of surface EMG signal patterns were firstly characterized by spectral energy change. 13 healthy subjects were instructed to execute forearm supination （FS） and forearm pronation （FP） with their right foreanns when their forearm muscles were ＂fatigue＂ or ＂relaxed＂. All surface EMG signals were recorded from their right forearm flexor during their right forearm actions. Two sets of surface EMG signals were segmented from every surface EMG signal appropriately at preparing stage and acting stage. Relative wavelet packet energy （symbolized by pnp and pna respectively at preparing stage and acting stage, n denotes the nth frequency band） of surface EMG signal firstly was calculated and then, the difference （Pn = Pna-Pnp） were gained. The results showed that Pn from some frequency bands can effectively characterize the general characteristics of surface EMG signal patterns. Compared with Pn in other frequency bands, P4, the spectral energy change from 93.75 to 125 Hz, was more appropriately regarded as the features.

Characterization of surface EMG signals using improved approximate entropy

An improved approximate entropy (ApEn) is presented and applied to characterize surface electromyography (sEMG) signals. In most previous experiments using nonlinear dynamic analysis, this certain processing was often confronted with the problem of insufficient data points and noisy circumstances, which led to unsatisfactory results. Compared with fractal dimension as well as the standard ApEn, the improved ApEn can extract information underlying sEMG signals more efficiently and accu- rately. The method introduced here can also be applied to other medium-sized and noisy physiological signals.