Assessment of muscle performance using vibromyography (VMG) and electromyography(EMG)

Abstract

The present work shows a preliminary study conducted using Vibromyography (VMG) sensor and Electromyography (EMG) sensor with the help of Biodex system on evaluating muscle performances. Surface EMG and Biodex torque are set as reference signal to be compared with VMG signal obtained from the experiment. A total of 5 healthy subjects performed isokinetic knee extension exercise at the speed of 90 deg·s-1 and 120 deg·s-1 supported by biodex dynamometer. Preliminary statistical analysis to find the correlation between the reference signals is calculated. An acceptable high correlation values was obtained for both speeds where Biodex-VMG shows (r=0.80 and r=0.81), Biodex-EMG shows (r=0.89 and r=0.88) and VMG-EMG shows(r=0.78 and r=0.77) for speed 90 deg·s-1 and 120 deg·s-1 respectively. A slightly higher correlation was achieved between biodex and VMG suggesting the high potential of the sensor for mechanical evaluations. However further analysis considering various conditions is needed in order to prove the reliability of VMG as a sensor to measure force related parameter in muscle evaluation.