Design of a robust EMG sensing interface for pattern classification

Electromyographic (EMG) pattern classification has been widely investigated for neural control of external devices in order to assist with movements of patients with motor deficits. Classification performance deteriorates due to inevitable disturbances to the sensor interface, which significantly challenges the clinical value of this technique. This study aimed to design a sensor fault detection (SFD) module in the sensor interface to provide reliable EMG pattern classification. This module monitored the recorded signals from individual EMG electrodes and performed a self-recovery strategy to recover the classification performance when one or more sensors were disturbed. To evaluate this design, we applied synthetic disturbances to EMG signals collected from leg muscles of able-bodied subjects and a subject with a transfemoral amputation and compared the accuracies for classifying transitions between different locomotion modes with and without the SFD module. The results showed that the SFD module maintained classification performance when one signal was distorted and recovered about 20% of classification accuracy when four signals were distorted simultaneously. The method was simple to implement. Additionally, these outcomes were observed for all subjects, including the leg amputee, which implies the promise of the designed sensor interface for providing a reliable neural-machine interface for artificial legs.