Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions

Surface electromyography (EMG) can be used in the rehabilitation of musculoskeletal disorders, for evaluating the coordination of muscles that stabilize a joint, or as an objective tool in assessing muscle fatigue. This latter may be achieved by evaluating the low-frequency content of the EMG. Howev...

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Main Authors: José Dilermando Costa Junior, José Manoel de Seixas, Antonio Mauricio Ferreira Leite Miranda de Sá
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-12-01
Series:Franklin Open
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773186324001075
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author José Dilermando Costa Junior
José Manoel de Seixas
Antonio Mauricio Ferreira Leite Miranda de Sá
author_facet José Dilermando Costa Junior
José Manoel de Seixas
Antonio Mauricio Ferreira Leite Miranda de Sá
author_sort José Dilermando Costa Junior
collection DOAJ
description Surface electromyography (EMG) can be used in the rehabilitation of musculoskeletal disorders, for evaluating the coordination of muscles that stabilize a joint, or as an objective tool in assessing muscle fatigue. This latter may be achieved by evaluating the low-frequency content of the EMG. However, the electrocardiogram (ECG) interference is also recorded when EMG is acquired close to the heart. It may mask or even modify the information of interest in the EMG. Different signal processing techniques have been proposed to eliminate ECG artifacts from the EMG signals, the high-pass filter being the most used one. Nevertheless, this classic filtering approach would also attenuate EMG activities below 30 Hz, which contain information from low-intensity muscle contractions. This work addresses the automatic ECG attenuation when multichannel EMG is collected on the left pectoralis major muscle during a muscle fatigue test. The proposed ECG artifact mitigation extends a successful automatic template subtraction (TS) approach, which does not require an extra reference channel and is now applied to independent EMG source signal components extracted using a blind source separation technique (ICA, Independent Component Analysis). The automatic detection of ECG components was performed through two alternative measures: entropy and Kullback-Leibler divergence. While the ECG interference seems to hamper the detection of muscle fatigue in the low-contraction regime, the association ICA+TS preserved better the EMG low-frequency content, and the entropy-based automatic detection was found to be more suitable, avoiding possible errors that might arise from manual detection procedures.
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spelling doaj-art-ae1196ec1e75440ba90e6bb26a2d405d2025-08-20T02:34:44ZengElsevierFranklin Open2773-18632024-12-01910017710.1016/j.fraope.2024.100177Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractionsJosé Dilermando Costa Junior0José Manoel de Seixas1Antonio Mauricio Ferreira Leite Miranda de Sá2Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / Biomedical Engineering Program, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilFederal University of Rio de Janeiro / Signal Processing Laboratory, COPPE/Poli, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilFederal University of Rio de Janeiro / Biomedical Engineering Program, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Corresponding author.Surface electromyography (EMG) can be used in the rehabilitation of musculoskeletal disorders, for evaluating the coordination of muscles that stabilize a joint, or as an objective tool in assessing muscle fatigue. This latter may be achieved by evaluating the low-frequency content of the EMG. However, the electrocardiogram (ECG) interference is also recorded when EMG is acquired close to the heart. It may mask or even modify the information of interest in the EMG. Different signal processing techniques have been proposed to eliminate ECG artifacts from the EMG signals, the high-pass filter being the most used one. Nevertheless, this classic filtering approach would also attenuate EMG activities below 30 Hz, which contain information from low-intensity muscle contractions. This work addresses the automatic ECG attenuation when multichannel EMG is collected on the left pectoralis major muscle during a muscle fatigue test. The proposed ECG artifact mitigation extends a successful automatic template subtraction (TS) approach, which does not require an extra reference channel and is now applied to independent EMG source signal components extracted using a blind source separation technique (ICA, Independent Component Analysis). The automatic detection of ECG components was performed through two alternative measures: entropy and Kullback-Leibler divergence. While the ECG interference seems to hamper the detection of muscle fatigue in the low-contraction regime, the association ICA+TS preserved better the EMG low-frequency content, and the entropy-based automatic detection was found to be more suitable, avoiding possible errors that might arise from manual detection procedures.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773186324001075ECG interference mitigationEMG denoisingMultichannel analysisIndependent component analysisTemplate subtractionHigh-pass filter
spellingShingle José Dilermando Costa Junior
José Manoel de Seixas
Antonio Mauricio Ferreira Leite Miranda de Sá
Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions
Franklin Open
ECG interference mitigation
EMG denoising
Multichannel analysis
Independent component analysis
Template subtraction
High-pass filter
title Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions
title_full Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions
title_fullStr Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions
title_full_unstemmed Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions
title_short Reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low-intensity contractions
title_sort reducing electrocardiographic interference in the multichannel electromyogram to help muscle fatigue assessment in low intensity contractions
topic ECG interference mitigation
EMG denoising
Multichannel analysis
Independent component analysis
Template subtraction
High-pass filter
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773186324001075
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