A dynamic feedforward neural network for subset classification of myoelectric signal patterns

Abstract

Many biological signals are transient in nature, and the myoelectric signal (MES) is no exception. This is problematic for pattern classifiers that fail to incorporate the structure present in the temporal dimension of these signals. Standard feedforward neural network classifiers have difficulty processing temporal signals-time cannot be implicitly represented by the network architecture. A dynamic feedforward neural network architecture is described here that more effectively integrates the temporal information in transient signals, The internal representation of time also allows the dynamic network to classify subsets of the full temporal record. This reduces the time needed to obtain a classification result-an obvious benefit to real-time identification applications, such as the control of prosthetic devices.