On the Nature and Elimination of Stimulus Artifact in Nerve Signals Evoked and Recorded Using Surface Electrodes

The electrical stimulus pulse and the surface electrodes commonly used to study compound action potentials of peripheral nerves give rise to an artifact consisting of an initial spike and a longer lasting tail which often interferes with the recorded signal. The artifact has four sources: 1) the voltage gradient between the recording electordes caused by stimulus current flowing through the limb, 2) the common-mode voltage of the limb caused by current escaping through the ground electrode, 3) the capacitive coupling between the stimulating and recording leads, and 4) the high-pass filtering characteristics of the recording amplifier. This paper models these sources and presents several methodological rules for minimizing their effects. Also presented are three computer-based methods for subtracting the residual artifact from contaminated records using estimates of the artifact obtained from: 1) subthreshold stimulation, 2) a second recording site remote from the nerve, or 3) stimulation during the refractory period of the nerve.