Two dimensional high density surface EMG (HD-EMG) technology and applications
Abstract
The motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) sum to produce a spatial distribution of voltage on the skin surface above the muscle. This time varying “electrical image” may be acquired with an electrode grid that provides two dimensional (2D) sampling in space. The time evolution of the resulting “image” may be tracked by sampling in time. This methodology is referred to as High Density EMG (HD-EMG) (Zwarts et al. 2003). The structure of the electrical image (potential map), its evolution in time and its time integrals (RMS or ARV) contain information of anatomical and physiological relevance related to force (Staudeman et al.2007) and fatigue. The problem of extracting this information from HD-EMG has been addressed by many research groups and represents a challenge in surface EMG technology (Kleine et al. 2000).