Using textile electrode EMG for prosthetic movement identification in transradial amputees

Wearable systems based on continuously monitoring of vital physiological signals without interfering with user's daily life much are desired urgently in health care. Similarly, the limb amputees who need to wear their myoelectric prostheses for a long time daily expect a comfortable and reliable prosthetic system. It is inconvenient in clinical application of a myoelectric prosthesis to use the commonly used gel electrode for electromyography (EMG) recording over all day. Textile electrode with characteristics of ventilation, flexibility, and folding, may be an ideal selection of physiological signal monitoring in clinical applications. In this study, the textile electrodes made using screen printing technology were used for EMG recordings and the real-time performance of the textile-electrode EMG in myoelectric control of multifunctional prostheses was investigated in transradial amputees and able-bodied subjects for comparison purpose. The results over seven able-bodied subjects showed that the textile electrode could achieve similar performance as conventional metal electrodes for both the off-line classification accuracy and the real-time motion completion rate in operating a virtual hand. With the textile electrodes, the average off-line classification accuracy of 73.4% and the real-time motion completion rate of 81.9% within a 5 s time limit were achieved in three transradial amputees. These pilot results suggested that the textile electrodes might be feasible for EMG recordings in control of myoelectric prostheses.