New Analysis and Development of Surface EMG

Abstract

The surface electromyography (EMG) is used to evaluate skeletal muscle, mainly in the clinical and sports science fields. Muscular activity is regulated by types and number of motor units (MUs). The action potential generated by MUs are measured as EMG. Most of the use of surface EMG is to evaluate the amount of muscle activity by amplitude information. Although surface EMG contains information on the activities of many MUs, these analyzes are rarely performed. We have developed a new method to extract conduction waves by focusing on the conduction of the potential waveform using a multi-channel surface EMG. By this method, it can be examined that the information on the emission of action potentials from motor nerves. We gave an overview of this method and its development. The method finds pairs of similar waveforms as conduction waves by quantitative judgment automatically. Since the position of conduction waves can be confirmed automatically, the position of the end-plate can be found. Also, depending on the research, it is possible to determine the angle of muscle fibers automatically. We are also studying the relationship between muscle thickness and conduction waves for diagnosis of muscle condition.