Estimation of Recruitment and Firing Rate in EMG Signals

McGill KC, Zardoshti Kermani M, Lateva ZC. Estimation of recruitment and firing rate in EMG signals. Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc Conf, 1997.

We present a method for estimating the number of active motor units and the mean motor-unit firing rate for an intramuscularly recorded EMG signal. First, the motor-unit action potentials (MUAPs) are detected by high-pass filtering the signal and detecting all the spikes that exceed a threshold. Then the number of motor units, the mean number of spikes per MUAP, and the mean firing rate are computed using the autocorrelation of interspike intervals. Results from ten moderate-force EMG signals agree well with results obtained by computer-aided decomposition.