A Study of Emg Signals from Limbs with Congenital Absence and Acquired Losses

INTRODUCTION The basic assumption made by the designers of EMG amplifier systems is that the substantial difference between different person's detected EMG signals is the energy generated, but the spectral content is sufficiently similar to be ignored. Anecdotally, there is little or no expectation that there is any structural difference between the muscles of persons with congenital absence and those with an amputation, although newer evidence suggests this is untrue [1]. This approximation works well for simple amplifier/detector systems that were common a decade past [2], but with the increasing availability of compact on-line processing devices and the increase in differing EMG processing schemes this approximation is likely to prove unreliable [3].