Ability of spatial filters to distinguish between two MUAPs generated from MUs with different locations, sizes and fibers pennation

Abstract

Abstract In this study, we investigated the effects of the motor unit (MU) location and size and the fibres pennation on the ability of anisotropic and almost isotropic spatial filters used to detect surface electromyographic (EMG) signals to make a distinction between motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) generated from two MUs. The study was based on simulated MUAPs. The fibres orientation was performed by varying the fibres pennation angle (FPA). The root mean square error (RMSE) between MUAPs generated from two MUs was used as a criterion to evaluate the ability of the investigated filters to distinguish between two generated MUAPs. The location of a MU was fixed and the second MU moved away from the first MU in the transversal direction for the first case and in the depth direction in the second case to take five different locations in every case. We showed that the capability of the studied filters to more separate two MUAPs strongly depended on MU location, MU size and FPA. This capability of separation was best with large distances between the two MUs and with large sizes of them. Furthermore, the main survey of this work was that the BiTDD filter has the best ability of separation of two MUAPs than the other filters in a given FPA interval. The number of pennation angles in this interval is related to the location and size of the moved MU.