A review of techniques for extraction of cardiac artifacts in surface EMG signals and results for simulation of ECG-EMG mixture signal

The electromyography (EMG) is a technique used for recording and analysis of the signals generated due to electrical activity of skeletal muscles. These signals are also called as myoelectric signals. EMG is used as an evaluation tool in the fields such as applied research, physiotherapy, sports training etc. The surface electromyography (sEMG) allows information regarding overall muscle function and conduction. For this, the electrodes are placed on the surface of the skin to obtain the myoelectric signal. When EMG is performed on specific muscles such as shoulder muscles and upper trunk or it is recorded in monopolar configuration, most of the times it is contaminated by electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. This cardiac artifact is difficult to avoid. Therefore, to extract appropriate and qualitative information of the EMG signal, it is essential to extract cardiac artifacts from it and obtain pure EMG signal. A review of techniques used for this are discussed. Also, the simulation results for ECG-EMG mixture are included.