MUAP extraction and classification based on wavelet transform and ICA for EMG decomposition

Abstract

We have developed an effective technique for extracting and classifying motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) for electromyography (EMG) signal decomposition. This technique is based on single-channel and short period's real recordings from normal subjects and artificially generated recordings. This EMG signal decomposition technique has several distinctive characteristics compared with the former decomposition methods: (1) it bandpass filters the EMG signal through wavelet filter and utilizes threshold estimation calculated in wavelet transform for noise reduction in EMG signals to detect MUAPs before amplitude single threshold filtering; (2) it removes the power interference component from EMG recordings by combining independent component analysis (ICA) and wavelet filtering method together; (3) the similarity measure for MUAP clustering is based on the variance of the error normalized with the sum of RMS values for segments; (4) it finally uses ICA method to subtract all accurately classified MUAP spikes from original EMG signals. The technique of our EMG signal decomposition is fast and robust, which has been evaluated through synthetic EMG signals and real EMG signals. © International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering 2006.