International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.

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Monitoring of Electromyographic (EMG) Signals with USB Interface

Gzin zmen, Selcuk University,Turkey Yksel zbay, Selcuk University,Turkey

Abstract: Electromyography is a muscle examination method which tracks and interprets electrical activity that provides to muscle contractions. Surface electromyography (SEMG) is widely used as a diagnostic tool in estimation of muscle strength, calculation of muscle fatigue and ergonomics, sports physiology and rehabilitation. Obtaining and examining carefully EMG signals provide valuable information in determining and examining abnormalities in the muscle and motor system. In this research, a computer based, instrumentation system has been designed for EMG signals which are taken from the patients arm muscle. The aim of the hardware is to provide, transfer to computer and view the EMG information of the patients received over the USB port. The essential hardware and software was created to perform the system. On the phase of obtaining the signal, EMG signals that were received from the surface electrodes over the patients arms have been subjected to various filtering and amplification processes to transport from the transmission channel to the environment that the signal will be displayed. The EMG signal was translated from analogue to digital and was transferred to the computer with USB. After transforming analogue signal to digital, obtained data was filtered with MATLAB in the digital media and provided to display in the computer with the prepared software interface.
Keywords: electromyograhic signals (EMG), signal processing, instrumentation

1. Introduction
Electromyography (EMG) is a technique for evaluating and recording the activation signal of muscles. Electromyographc (EMG) signal gives information about muscle movements and it is used in areas such as clinical diagnosis, assist devices (prosthetic arm) and receiving electrical stimulation (Englehart et al. 1999). Surface electromyographic (EMG) signals normally show random waveforms, because they represent a sum of action potentials from many independently activated motor units (Masuda et al. 1999). Muscle fibers are organized into functional units within a muscle that called motor units (MUs). When the motor neuron is activated, all muscle fibers in the MU respond, producing a motor unit action potential (MUAP), which is temporal and spatial summation of the APs of all muscle fibers in the MU (Sherrington, 1929). Surface electromyography (SEMG) is widely used as a diagnostic tool in estimation of muscle strength, calculation of muscle fatigue and ergonomics, sports physiology and rehabilitation (Medved 2001). Places and moves of limbs are controlled by electrical signals circulating between central and environmental nervous system and muscle. When pathological conditions start to increase in motor system such as spinal, motor neurons, muscle, muscle- nerve connections, the structure of electrical signals change. A careful acquirement and observation in electrical (electromyography) signals of these types provide valuable information to determine and observe anomalies in muscle and motor system. Moreover, measurement for

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

electrical activity of muscle with EMG signals makes muscle functions understandable better. In addition to this electromyography (EMG) pattern recognition has been applied in controlling prosthetic devices for amputees (Graupe et al. 1982). The control is based on the fact that amputees still have the phantom of functions and hence are able to generate a repeatable (although perhaps gradually varying) EMG pattern corresponding to each of the functions (Cahn et al. 2000). The prosthesis is designed so as to be controlled by the EMG signals detected by surface electrodes attached to the subjects arm. The EMG signals are assumed to reflect the persons desired muscular movements. With the development of artificial intelligence methods, by processing EMG signals, moves are meaningful and control signals are produced to this result. Recently Neural Networks have attracted attention as a possible breakthrough in the area of analysis and classification due to their good learnability, adaptability and non-linear separability (Hiraiwa et al. 1989).

1. Formation of EMG
The surface electromyography signal represents the characteristics of muscle function and provides information about muscle activities. The analysis of this signal provides diagnostic information and can be used as an aid for choosing the most appropriate methods of treatment for muscle dysfunction (Roeleveld et al. 2006). Voluntary muscle moves occur as a result of transmission of electrical warnings to muscle on brain. As contractions of muscle fibers through electrical warnings transmitted by nerves realize, these contractions cause an electrical signal. This signal is measured with needle or surface electrode. In case it is measured with surface electrodes, a signal is obtained, so this signal is total one of action potentials active fibers produce in that area. In this point, a lot of action potentials belonging to motor unit will take part in. Active motor number increases with contraction force. Also signals produced by themselves can destroy each other and accumulated on effectiveness of many muscle fibers. Finally, the image of EMG is similar to randomly changing noise in time (Karlk, 1994). EMG signals are biological signals based on electric having frequency in interval as 100V1mV amplitude 10-500Hz band (Korrek, 2006). When we deal with action potential of only a muscle, it is possible to obtain a clear signal about 100mV. But there are lots of muscle sinews intervening in each other in muscle, so we face with a more complicated signal structure about 5mV, consisting of signals in different layers for surface measurement. The basic structure of signal depends on our information about the thickness between muscle and connecting tissue, the quality of connection between electrode and skin, the size of electrodes and the reaction time of only a motor unit. These change from one experiment to the other one, so EMG has a quantitative structure in accordance with warning level of muscle. EMG signals have been taken from biceps muscle in this study. Biceps muscle (biceps brachii) is a flexor muscle located on the fore part of arm. It sticks on both arm bone and scapula (triangular bone at the back) above. It is based on the forearm below. As the part of muscle based on the forearm bone is stable, when muscle contracts (muscle size shortens), the part of muscle based on the forearm bone is contracted the elbow angle, makes elbow twist. This muscle has been used in conditions such as flexion/extension of the elbow,

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

pronation/supination of the forearm, grasp and rest due to the most effective supination for the forearm that is for hand.

2.USB Connected Hardware in the Displaying of Emg signals

In this study surface EMG signals have been obtained with electrodes placed in 3cm intervals from biceps muscle of arm, with reference electrodes applied on a stable wrist and sent to instrumentation amplifier. After the amplitude of biopotential signal is strengthened 1000 folds, it has been sent to the driver amplifier to increase value between 1-10 folds, noises intervening in signal have been suppressed with low and high pass filters designed for 5Hz500Hz cut-off frequencies. Analog signal has been transformed into numeral with a digital adapter, transmitted to computer with convertor cable USB-RS232 (serial port) made understandable with system hardware. Block diagram of designed system is given at figure-1.

Figure-1 Block diagram of designed system

3.1. Electrodes
Measuring accurately the sEMG signal depends on the properties of the electrodes. Electrodes serve to convert the ionic currents generated in muscles into an electronic current. In this transduction some noises are occurred. They are generated by factors such as fluctuations in impedance between the conductive transducer and the skin (Day, 2002). One effective method to decrease impedance effects is to use Silver - silver-chloride (Ag-AgCl) electrodes. This electrode consists of a silver metal surface plated with a thin layer of silver chloride material. Ag- AgCl is the most common composite for the metallic part of gelled electrodes. And they are used in over 80% of surface EMG applications (Duchene & Goubel, 1993).

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

The Ag-AgCl surface electrodes, used in this study, placed in 3cm intervals from biceps muscle of arm and conductive gel is used. Moreover the noise ratio is minimized with a reference electrodes applied on a stable wrist and thus the desired EMG signal is obtained.

3.2. Multiple amplifiers

Human skin has quite high impedance. It is necessary to think surface electrodes as a voltage source of high impedance. That is why, amplifier input impedance should be 5 M and over it. In addition to this, common mode rejection ratio should be 100 dB at least, offset voltage and shift be low, profit be high and noise be less. The best application for this is instrumentation multiple amplifiers. Instrumentation amplifiers have decisive circuit characteristics due to negative feedback. An instrumentation amplifier consists of two parts as a difference amplifier and a buffer amplifier. In this study AD620 has been used as instrumentation amplifier. AD620 has a feature to increase profit between 1-10.000 folds with an external resistor. It has a large usage field in especially measurement of biopotential signals with 50 V low offset voltage. Profit value is calculated on equation (1).

G = 1+

49, 9

Rg

(1)

Driver amplifier has been designed to increase the biopotential difference between 1 and 10 folds, the difference is being high with instrumentation amplifier. Multiple amplifiers and connection with electrodes are given in the Figure2.

Figure2. Multiple amplifier and electrode connection

3.3. Filtering
Noise has been intervened in both understanding and strengthening the signal. Butterworth filter has been used to suppress this noise, it has 500 Hz cut-off frequency low pass on the

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

second degree in amplifier output. To suppress low frequency components, Butterworth filter has been used passing high, 5Hz cut-off frequency has been chosen for the process.

3.4. Monitoring of EMG signals on the computer

The USB to RS232 Converter board is a PIC microcontroller based device that receives a USB signal from a PC and converts the signal to an RS232 output. The output signal can be sent to any one of three serial ports. In the USB system, one device must be the host and this places some restrictions on its use in an industrial setting. The receiver must sample the input at the same rate as the data is sent, so Standard clock (baud) rates are used. 9600 baud is used in our example here, meaning that the bits are transmitted at about 1 Ok bits/s. Separate transmit and receive lines are used, so it is possible for these operations to be carried out simultaneously (Bates, 2006). Serial communication has been benefited to allow communication between hardware and computer. After analog signal is transformed into digital, a conductor device USB-RS232 has been used and communication has been realized with serial communication protocols. Data imaging has been done with an interface program and analysis has been done with Matlab. After EMG signals obtained with electrodes are strengthened and filtered, ADC PIC16F877 is in triggered and numeral data is sent on USB with serial port. Thus the analogue EMG signal is transferred to the computer with digital form. As you can see figure-3, benefiting from software program prepared, com address is chosen upon to be appointed by USB port and numeral data starts to appear on the screen.

Figure-3 The Interface Program

With opening port, EMG signals obtained from patients arm appear on the screen as well. Bit transmission rate of the programs interface settings should be chosen 9600 bauds as in PIC

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

program to work on system in a manner consistent. Sampling frequency is obtained with the ratio in data number to time for a certain period. After obtaining data wanted in that time, data retrieval can be stopped with the button close port, old data can be deleted with clean buton to retrieve new data. Saving files is necessary to use signal on Matlab. To process data on Matlab, these are taken with an interface program, saved as .txt, and then files are saved on data format to change extensions. When program written on Matlab is opened, raw state of EMG signal appears on the screen. With Matlab, the original signal is filtered with 5-50 Hz cut-off frequency in the digital area, for sake of clarity detailed image can be observed and normalized in the range of [0 1]. The purpose of normalization brings the values to the limited range as possible by eliminating the very different conditions between the values. Figure 4 shows that the original and the filtered signal which is recorded from the patient with 10s. and three times pronation/supination of the forearm, sampled in 120 Hz.

Figure-4. Original and filtered signal

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

Figure-5, Normalized and detailed signal

4. Results
Instrumentation system, which is aimed to design with a view to obtaining EMG signals, has been realized successfully, data has been observed in computer with USB port. It has been clear that amplifiers and folds work separately from each other in this system. EMG signals obtained have been transmitted to computer in only a system. With an interface program prepared, patient electrodes contract biceps muscle they based on, here as simultaneously signals have been followed; they have been made more understandable after processing with Matlab program. The most important problem in project has appeared during obtaining EMG signal from muscle. Signals obtained from muscles with two electrodes have been similar to noise than EMG signals. When we deal with a laboratory equipped with electrical materials, this difficulty has been resolved by using third electrode even though it is quite difficult to distinguish a signal having low amplitude of 5mV from environmental noise absorbed by human body. EMG signal has been obtained by using reference electrode, a pair of electrodes as well. In this point, the other problem is that EMG signals have been over 50 Hz network noise in case a system has been fed from the network. This condition has been destroyed by using 9V batteries instead of feeding system from the network. Following transmission of signal wanted to computer, changing EMG signals have been observed in the case of muscle contraction with hardware prepared, but signal has been disappeared as a result of lack of contact between connected cables and electrodes. To prevent this, a gel has been dripped between electrodes and cables, so contract problem has been resolved. Frequency interval of EMG signal has been known as 5-500 Hz. Cut-off frequencies of filters designed as analog have been chosen to this interval. Cut-off frequency of numeral AGF designed has been limited as well. The reason of this is not to have a value for sampling frequency over 120 Hz due to serial communication with PIC.

International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(1): 61 - 68 (2009) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 InternationalJournal.org

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