Tutorial. Frequency analysis of the surface EMG signal: Best practices

Abstract

This tutorial is aimed primarily to non-engineers (clinical researchers, clinicians, neurophysiology technicians, ergonomists, movement and sport scientists, physical therapists) or beginners using, or planning to use, surface electromyography (sEMG) as a monitoring and assessment tool for muscle and neuromuscular evaluations in the prevention and rehabilitation fields.

Its first purpose is to explain, with minimal mathematics, basic concepts related to: (a) time and frequency domain description of a signal, (b) Fourier transform, (c) amplitude, phase, and power spectrum of a signal, (d) sampling of a signal, (e) filtering of sEMG signals, (f) cross-spectrum and coherence between two signals, (g) signal stationarity and criteria for epoch selection, (h) myoelectric manifestations of muscle fatigue and (i) fatigue indices. These concepts are consolidated knowledge and are addressed and discussed with examples taken from the literature.