EMG Pattern Recognition for Persons with Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2019 Jun:2019:1055-1060. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2019.8779450.

Abstract

Pattern recognition based myoelectric control has been widely explored in the field of prosthetics, but little work has extended to other patient groups. Individuals with neurological injuries such as spinal cord injury may also benefit from more intuitive control that may facilitate more interactive treatments or improved control of functional electrical stimulation (FES) systems or assistive technologies. This work presents a pilot study with 10 individuals with cervical spinal cord injury between A and C on the American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale. Subjects attempted to elicit 10 classes of forearm and hand movements while their electromyogram (EMG) was recorded using a cuff of eight electrodes. Various well-known EMG features were evaluated using a linear discriminant analysis classifier, yielding classification error rates as low as 4.3% ± 3.9 across the 10 classes. Reducing the number of classes to five, those required to control a commercial therapeutic FES device, further reduced the error rates to (2.2% ± 4.4). Results from this study provide evidence supporting continued exploration of EMG pattern recognition techniques for use by high-level spinal cord injured populations as a method of intuitive control over interactive FES systems or assistive devices.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Electric Stimulation
  • Electromyography / methods*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Muscle, Skeletal / physiology
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated
  • Pilot Projects
  • Spinal Cord Injuries / physiopathology
  • Spinal Cord Injuries / rehabilitation*