Proportional estimation of finger movements from high-density surface electromyography
2016 | journal article. A publication with affiliation to the University of Göttingen.
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Proportional estimation of finger movements from high-density surface electromyography
Celadon, N.; Dosen, S.; Binder, I.; Ariano, P. & Farina, D. (2016)
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 13 art. 73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-016-0172-3
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Details
- Authors
- Celadon, Nicolo; Dosen, Strahinja; Binder, Iris; Ariano, Paolo; Farina, Dario
- Abstract
- Background: The importance to restore the hand function following an injury/disease of the nervous system led to the development of novel rehabilitation interventions. Surface electromyography can be used to create a user-driven control of a rehabilitation robot, in which the subject needs to engage actively, by using spared voluntary activation to trigger the assistance of the robot. Methods: The study investigated methods for the selective estimation of individual finger movements from high-density surface electromyographic signals (HD-sEMG) with minimal interference between movements of other fingers. Regression was evaluated in online and offline control tests with nine healthy subjects (per test) using a linear discriminant analysis classifier (LDA), a common spatial patterns proportional estimator (CSP-PE), and a thresholding (THR) algorithm. In all tests, the subjects performed an isometric force tracking task guided by a moving visual marker indicating the contraction type (flexion/extension), desired activation level and the finger that should be moved. The outcome measures were mean square error (nMSE) between the reference and generated trajectories normalized to the peak-to-peak value of the reference, the classification accuracy (CA), the mean amplitude of the false activations (MAFA) and, in the offline tests only, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCORR). Results: The offline tests demonstrated that, for the reduced number of electrodes (<= 24), the CSP-PE outperformed the LDA with higher precision of proportional estimation and less crosstalk between the movement classes (e.g., 8 electrodes, median MAFA similar to 0.6 vs. 1.1 %, median nMSE similar to 4.3 vs. 5.5 %). The LDA and the CSP-PE performed similarly in the online tests (median nMSE < 3.6 %, median MAFA < 0.7 %), but the CSP-PE provided a more stable performance across the tested conditions (less improvement between different sessions). Furthermore, THR, exploiting topographical information about the single finger activity from HD-sEMG, provided in many cases a regression accuracy similar to that of the pattern recognition techniques, but the performance was not consistent across subjects and fingers. Conclusions: The CSP-PE is a method of choice for selective individual finger control with the limited number of electrodes (< 24), whereas for the higher resolution of the recording, either method (CPS-PA or LDA) can be used with a similar performance. Despite the abundance of detection points, the simple THR showed to be significantly worse compared to both pattern recognition/regression methods. Nevertheless, THR is a simple method to apply (no training), and it could still give satisfactory performance in some subjects and/or simpler scenarios (e.g., control of selected fingers). These conclusions are important for guiding future developments towards the clinical application of the methods for individual finger control in rehabilitation robotics.
- Issue Date
- 2016
- Status
- published
- Publisher
- Biomed Central Ltd
- Journal
- Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
- ISSN
- 1743-0003