Temporal gait parameters captured by Surface Electromyography measurement

Surface Electromyography (SEMG) is a popular method to determine the muscle activities because of its noninvasive feature. Usually, the low frequency of surface EMG measurement (< 20 Hz) has been filtered out for the removal of motion artefact. Indeed, the frequency of motion captured by the SEMG measurement would be useful for determining motion events. If the acquired electrical signals from SEMG measurement can represent the movement of limbs or change of joint angle, the number of transducers for kinematic measurement could be reduced. Thus, the measurement system for a particular clinical study can be simplified and the function of current SEMG measurement devices could be extended for motion analysis even no motion transducer is used in testing. In this paper, gyroscopes are used to measure the dynamic characteristics of lower extremity (shank and thigh). With the information of dynamic characteristics, linear envelope and linear prediction are implemented for processing the SEMG signals. The results show that using the signals from SEMG measurement is feasible to capture the period of swing phase, stance phase and stride while having no significant difference than using gyroscopes and foot switch.