Effect of Characteristics of Dynamic Muscle Contraction on Crosstalk in Surface Electromyography Recordings

An investigation into the ability of different spatial filters to reduce the amount of crosstalk in a surface electromyography measurement was conducted. A simulation model was implemented to compare the performance of four spatial filters under dynamic muscle contractions. Two parameters of a dynamic muscle contraction, namely muscle shortening and varying contraction force, were evaluated separately. The normal double differential filter resulted in the best crosstalk rejection for varying contraction force simulations, while the double differential filter performed best when incorporating muscle shortening. It is furthermore suggested that crosstalk is influenced more by muscle shortening than by changes in the contraction force.