Suggestion of fatigue evaluation index based on myoelectric potentials and electroencephalograms analysis for cooperation diagnosis support robot

Abstract

Ultrasound diagnosis has been widely employed among diagnostic imaging methods because of its advantages: compactness, low cost, and minimally invasive. However, ultrasound diagnosis places a heavy burden on doctors and ultrasonographers because they need to image the same tomogram continuously for a long time. The examiner’s muscles and skeletons are damaged due to such workload. These symptoms, called musculoskeletal disorders, have become a severe problem. Against this background, the construction of a system to support ultrasound diagnosis is expected. Previous studies have analyzed myoelectric potentials and electroencephalograms (EEG) during ultrasound diagnosis. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between myoelectric potentials and EEG for a cooperation diagnosis support system based on biological signals analysis. As a result, a correlation between an increase in %MVC and an increase in EEG spectral average was observed. This result showed the feasibility of a simultaneous evaluation system of mental and physical fatigue by measuring EEG.