抄録
Activities of the skeletal muscles produce body movement, maintain body postures and position as well as support soft tissues. Monitoring the muscle activities is very important in rehabilitation, physical training, and in the development of life-support equipment for physically disabled persons. Myodynamometer and electromyogram (EMG) have been widely used for monitoring muscle activities. However, these methods monitor the contraction of the muscle indirectly. Recently, mechanomyogram (MMG) has attracted much attention for its ability to directly monitor the muscle contraction. The MMG is a recording of the mechanical vibration on the body surface caused by the dimensional change of the muscle fibers, and thus directly reflects the contraction of the muscle. Using of the MMG, it is expected that more detailed information of muscle activities such as muscle fatigue, which is difficult to be monitored by myodynamometer and EMG, can be obtained, as well as information of the activities of slow and fast fibers. However, current MMG sensors are only suitable for monitoring the isometric contraction of muscle, thus current studies using MMG mainly focus on the monitoring of the isometric contraction of muscle, for example, muscle fatigue estimation. Study of the MMG on the monitoring of non-isometric contraction of muscle has not yet thoroughly been done. In this thesis, a novel MMG sensor system that can be used for monitoring both the isometric and non-isometric contraction of muscle is developed.
