An improved method for muscle activation detection during gait

Estimation of on-off timing of human skeletal muscles during movement based on surface electromyography (EMG) is an important issue in sport performance and health care applications. Several methods have been proposed for detecting the on and off timing of the muscle. However, little is known about the reliability and accuracy of these methods, which frequently rely on intuitive and heuristic criteria. Some sophisticated techniques have been proposed, but have a disadvantage of heavy computational load and therefore are not suitable for real-time online applications. An improved method is proposed based on the double-threshold method of P. Bonato et al. (see IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol.45, p.287-99, 1998). It provides a higher sensitivity for activation detection. In addition, the whitening process of the EMG signal is avoided, significantly reducing the computation time.