Use of the surface electromyography for a quantitative trend validation of estimated muscle forces

Surface EMG is a non-invasive measurement of an individual muscle activity and it can be used as the indirect form of a simulated muscle forces validation. The quantitative curves comparison has some potential, which has not been fully exploited yet [13]. The purpose of current study was to quantitatively compare muscle forces predicted using musculoskeletal models to measured surface electromyography signals. A metrics based on correlation and an electromechanical delay correction for a quantitative trend validation has been proposed. Kinematics of a normal gait was collected for three healthy subjects together with ground reaction forces and EMG signals of eight different muscles of both legs. Dynamic simulations have been performed for two models of differing complexity from OpenSim library (Gait2392 and Gait2354) [2,5,6], static optimization method and computed muscle control algorithm [20] have been used. It has been shown, that the level of force-EMG trend compliance, obtained for applied models and simulation techniques, is related rather to the selected muscle than to applied optimization criteria or technique. The contribution of analyzed muscles during gait has been predicted better by complex model than by simplified model. Moreover relationship between the body proportion of subject and the degree of correlation has been observed. Proposed metrics and obtained results can be the basis for further identification of cost functions, which could most closely describe motor control strategy. (C) 2018 Nalecz Institute of Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.