High-Performance Hand Kinematics Estimation Requires Full Bandwidth
High-Density EMG Recordings
Abstract
Surface electromyography (sEMG) is a non-invasive technique that records
the electrical signals generated by muscles through electrodes placed on
the skin. sEMG is the state-of-the-art method used to control active
upper limb prostheses because of the association between its amplitude
and the neural drive sent from the spinal cord to muscles. However,
accurately estimating the kinematics of a freely moving human hand using
sEMG from extrinsic hand muscles remains a challenge. Deep learning has
been recently successfully applied to this problem by mapping raw sEMG
signals into kinematics. Nonetheless, the optimal number of EMG signals
and the type of pre-processing that would maximize performance have not
been investigated yet. Here, we analyze the impact of these factors on
the accuracy in kinematics estimates. For this purpose, we processed
monopolar sEMG signals that were originally recorded from 320 electrodes
over the forearm muscles of 13 subjects. We used a previously published
deep learning method that can map the kinematics of the human hand with
real-time resolution. While state-of-the-art myocontrol algorithms
essentially use the temporal envelope of the EMG signal as the only EMG
feature, we show that our approach requires the full bandwidth of the
signal in the temporal domain for accurate estimates. Spatial filtering
had a smaller impact and low-order spatial filters may be suitable.
Moreover, reducing the number of channels by ablation resulted in large
performance losses. The highest accuracy was reached with the highest
number of available sensors (320). Importantly and unexpected, our
results also showed that increasing the number of channels above those
used in this study may further enhance the accuracy in predicting the
kinematics of the human hand. We conclude that full bandwidth
high-density EMG systems of hundreds of electrodes are needed for
accurate kinematic estimates of the human hand.