Neural muscle activation detection: A deep learning approach using surface electromyography

Abstract

The timing of muscles activation which is a key parameter in determining plenty of medical conditions can be greatly assessed by the surface EMG signal which inherently carries an immense amount of information. Many techniques for measuring muscle activity detection exist in the literature. However, due to the complex nature of the EMG signal as well as the interference from other muscles that is observed during the measurement of the EMG signal, the accuracy of these techniques is compromised. In this paper, we introduce the neural muscle activation detection (NMAD) framework that detects the muscle activation based on deep learning. The main motivation behind using deep learning is to allow the neural network to detect based on the appropriate signal features instead of depending on certain assumptions. Not only the presented approach significantly improves the accuracy of timing detection, but because of the training nature, it can adapt to operate under different levels of interference and signal-to-noise ratio.