A Pilot Study of Individual Muscle Force Prediction during Elbow Flexion and Extension in the Neurorehabilitation Field

• Main Authors: Jiateng Hou, Yingfei Sun, Lixin Sun, Bingyu Pan, Zhipei Huang, Jiankang Wu, Zhiqiang Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2016-11-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: elbow; muscle force; neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) model; neurorehabilitation; surface electromyography (sEMG)
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/16/12/2018

This paper proposes a neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) model to predict individual muscle force during elbow flexion and extension. Four male subjects were asked to do voluntary elbow flexion and extension. An inertial sensor and surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors were attached to subject's forearm. Joint angle calculated by fusion of acceleration and angular rate using an extended Kalman filter (EKF) and muscle activations obtained from the sEMG signals were taken as the inputs of the proposed NMS model to determine individual muscle force. The result shows that our NMS model can predict individual muscle force accurately, with the ability to reflect subject-specific joint dynamics and neural control solutions. Our method incorporates sEMG and motion data, making it possible to get a deeper understanding of neurological, physiological, and anatomical characteristics of human dynamic movement. We demonstrate the potential of the proposed NMS model for evaluating the function of upper limb movements in the field of neurorehabilitation.