Proposition of electromyographic signal interpretation in the rehabilitation process of patients with spinal cord injuries

Abstract

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is one of the examinations within the protocol of neuro-rehabilitation processes, that allow the assessment of possible patient progress with respect to conductivity of neurons and skeletal muscle functionality. The interpretation of sEMG signal is one of the critical issues that should be considered in order to diagnose patients with severe spinal cord injuries. Currently, it is very hard to relate values gathered from sEMG to existing reference scale of patient rehabilitation progress. What more, the interpretation of the signal data is very subjective and it is also strongly related to current physical disposition of the patient. Therefore, the objective of our research, is to introduce a mathematical approach which determines the patient's physical condition, based on sEMG data. To achieve this goal, we propose to use properly defined fuzzy Sugeno integral. The proposed operator allows to combine both: subjective expert knowledge and signal data.