Evaluation of Muscle Function by Means of a Muscle-Specific and a Global Index
Department of Electronics and Telecommunications and PoliToBIOMed Lab, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
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Academic Editor: Georg Fischer
Sensors 2021, 21(21), 7186; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21217186
Received: 23 September 2021
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Revised: 19 October 2021
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Accepted: 27 October 2021
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Published: 29 October 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromyography Signal Acquisition and Processing for Movement Analysis)
Gait analysis applications in clinics are still uncommon, for three main reasons: (1) the considerable time needed to prepare the subject for the examination; (2) the lack of user-independent tools; (3) the large variability of muscle activation patterns observed in healthy and pathological subjects. Numerical indices quantifying the muscle coordination of a subject could enable clinicians to identify patterns that deviate from those of a reference population and to follow the progress of the subject after surgery or completing a rehabilitation program. In this work, we present two user-independent indices. First, a muscle-specific index (MFI) that quantifies the similarity of the activation pattern of a muscle of a specific subject with that of a reference population. Second, a global index (GFI) that provides a score of the overall activation of a muscle set. These two indices were tested on two groups of healthy and pathological children with encouraging results. Hence, the two indices will allow clinicians to assess the muscle activation, identifying muscles showing an abnormal activation pattern, and associate a functional score to every single muscle as well as to the entire muscle set. These opportunities could contribute to facilitating the diffusion of surface EMG analysis in clinics.
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Keywords:
gait analysis; EMG; muscle activation patterns; movement analysis
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MDPI and ACS Style
Rosati, S.; Ghislieri, M.; Dotti, G.; Fortunato, D.; Agostini, V.; Knaflitz, M.; Balestra, G. Evaluation of Muscle Function by Means of a Muscle-Specific and a Global Index. Sensors 2021, 21, 7186. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21217186
AMA Style
Rosati S, Ghislieri M, Dotti G, Fortunato D, Agostini V, Knaflitz M, Balestra G. Evaluation of Muscle Function by Means of a Muscle-Specific and a Global Index. Sensors. 2021; 21(21):7186. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21217186
Chicago/Turabian StyleRosati, Samanta, Marco Ghislieri, Gregorio Dotti, Daniele Fortunato, Valentina Agostini, Marco Knaflitz, and Gabriella Balestra. 2021. "Evaluation of Muscle Function by Means of a Muscle-Specific and a Global Index" Sensors 21, no. 21: 7186. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21217186
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