Homomorphic Deconvolution for MUAP Estimation from Surface EMG Signals

This paper presents a technique for parametric model estimation of the motor unit action potential (MUAP) from the surface electromyography (sEMG) signal by using homomorphic deconvolution. The cepstrum-based deconvolution removes the effect of the stochastic impulse train, which originates the sEMG signal, from the power spectrum of sEMG signal itself. In this way only information on MUAP shape and amplitude were maintained and then used to estimate the parameters of a time-domain model of the MUAP itself. In order to validate the effectiveness of this technique, sEMG signals recorded during several biceps curl exercises have been used for MUAP amplitude and time scale estimation. The parameters so extracted as functions of time were used to evaluate muscle fatigue showing a good agreement with previously published results.