Background
Electromyography, as the name suggests, it's study of Electric Muscle Graph. It is electrophysiological study of the neuromuscular system.
Now, where are these signals generated from? Our brain controls muscles. There are motor neurons present, hence our brain controls muscles by sending electrical signals along these motor neurons. Now each of these motor neuron makes a group of muscle fibers together, which is termed as motor unit.
Now when an individual contracts his arm for example, this single motor units is what that creates and electrical signature canned a motor unit action potential. The range of the EMG signal would be 0-10mV prior the processing of the signal. sEMG is performed to obtain bio-electric potentials from the surface by placing the electrodes over the target spot.
Design Methodology
[1.] Surface Electrode will be placed over the muscle spot, which is generally the midline of the muscle far from the tendon origins. Here, Gel Electrodes are preferred over dry electrodes to suppress transducer noise. Two electrodes will be placed over the muscle area, where bio-potential is generated and other electrode is placed at minimal bio- electric muscle activity. These two sets of inputs need to be amplified, while removing the environmental noise.
[2.] The signal obtained from the EMG sensor will be processed using AD8226 Instrumentation Amplifier. This amplifier would provide high CMRR value, and can be adjustable for required differential gain.
[3.] The output of the Instrumentation Amplifier is fed to the low pass filter, to remove the high frequency noise.
[4.] The obtained signal will be given as the input to a Butterworth Notch high-pass filters, to eliminate the DC level of electrodes, in order to reduce any noise affecting the low- frequency part of the sEMG signal, which is usually caused by instability of the signal.
[5.] It is necessary to shift the signal, until it reaches only positive values for PSoC The most effective way to do this, is to use the full wave rectifier.
[6.] PSoC reconfigurable technology offers a framework for designing practical instrumentation and processing of sEMG signals with a minimum of external circuitry and has prospects in biomedical instrumentation development . PSoC reconfigurable technology helps us to design this practical instrumentation and processing of sEMG signal, with minimum of external circuitry. PSoC microcontroller will be connected to the laptop and LabVIEW software will be used to produce graph of sEMG, which will be used as a reference for Modus Toolbox 3.0.
[7.] An actual sEMG test will be performed at the hospital as a reference on a single individual to check the project model's accuracy.
[8.] Real-Time testing and analysis will be performed.
Parameters To Assess Muscle Health
1.The amplitude varying with time, shown in Modus Toolbox /LabVIEW will be converted to RMS and will be used as a basic assessment.
Table of analog filtering and sampling parameters for EMG signals from selected journal articles, will be used to deduce the muscle health
2. The frequency spectrum plotted will be used to analyze the low and high frequency of the analog band pass filter used before the signal is Sampling Rate will be checked taking the table from the journals as a reference.
3. EMG signal Quality Monitor will be used to check the Signal to Noise Ratio(SNR), Baseline Noise and Clipping.
Apology
I had read academic articles related to PSOC microcontrollers. I applied for this challenge during my vacation as the dates were favourable. I am in my final year and had to complete my Major Project in my final semester. I was hoping to complete this project and submit this as my major project in a research section. But due to a delay in mentioning challenges and receiving the PSOC Microcontroller, I had no choice but to opt for another project idea and due to workload, I am not able to finish this project. I apologise for this and would love to complete this project in the future as I am sure this can't be completed within the given deadline.
