Causes of Performance Degradation in Electromyographic Pattern Recognition in Upper Limb Prostheses

Iris Kyranou, Sethu Vijayakumar, Mustafa Suphi Erden

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

81 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Surface Electromyography (EMG)-based pattern recognition methods have been investigated over the past years as a means of controlling upper limb prostheses. Despite the very good reported performance of myoelectric controlled prosthetic hands in lab conditions, real-time performance in everyday life conditions is not as robust and reliable, explaining the limited clinical use of pattern recognition control.The main reason behind the instability of myoelectric pattern recognition control is that EMG signals are non-stationary in real-life environments and present a lot of variability over time and across subjects, hence affecting the system’s performance. This can be the result of one or many combined changes, such as muscle fatigue, electrode displacement, difference in arm posture, user adaptation on the device over time and inter-subject singularity. In this paper an extensive literature review is performed to present the causes of the drift of EMG signals, ways of detecting them and possible techniques to counteract for their effects in the application of upper limb prostheses. The suggested techniques are organised in a table that can be used to recognise possible problems in the clinical application of EMG-based pattern recognition methods for upper limb prosthesis applications and state-of-the-art methods to deal with such problems.
Original languageEnglish
Article number58
JournalFrontiers in Neurorobotics
Volume12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Sept 2018

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