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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biosensors and Biomolecular Electronics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1565987
This article is part of the Research Topic Biomechanics, Sensing and Bio-inspired Control in Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics, Volume II View all 5 articles
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Electromyographic (EMG) activity monitoring constitutes the core of foundational research for the application of EMG signals in medical diagnostics, sports science, and human-machine interaction. However, the current research trend predominantly focuses on the recognition technologies of EMG signals, while the techniques for accurately detecting the onset and offset points of muscle activitythe change-point detection of EMG signals-have not received the necessary attention and thorough investigation. A novel method for EMG signal activity detection based on a variant version of the Teager-Kaiser energy operator (TKEO), namely the multi-resolution energy operator (MTEO), is proposed. Two strategies for constructing EMG activity monitors using MTEO are presented. One is a threshold-based detector (MEOTD) relying on signal baseline segment information, and the other is a detector mimicking the structure of a convolutional neural network (MEONND) without requiring prior knowledge of the signal. A semi-subjective evaluation model based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to evaluate the performance of the monitors on real EMG data. The results show that the MTEO has stronger preprocessing ability for EMG signals, and that the MTEO-based monitors are more reliable and accurate. In particular, the MEONND can achieve both computational efficiency and accuracy simultaneously. The proposed method for EMG signal activity detection improves both detection quality and efficiency without increasing algorithm complexity. This method can be applied to various fields that involve EMG signal analysis, such as ergonomics, human-machine interaction, and biomedical engineering.
Keywords: EMG activity monitor, Change-point detection, Teager-Kaiser energy operator (TKEO), Double-threshold detector, Convolutional neural network (CNN)
Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhao and Liao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Guosheng Zhao, Harbin Normal University, Harbin, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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