Upper Limb Movement Classification Via Electromyographic Signals and an Enhanced Probabilistic Network

Few studies in the literature have researched the use of surface electromyography (sEMG) for motor assessment post-stroke due to the complexity of this type of signal. However, recent advances in signal processing and machine learning have provided fresh opportunities for analyzing complex, non-linear, non-stationary signals, such as sEMG. This paper presents a method for identification of the upper limb movements from sEMG signals using a combination of digital signal processing, that is discrete wavelet transform, and the enhanced probabilistic neural network (EPNN). To explore the potential of sEMG signals for monitoring motor rehabilitation progress, this study used sEMG signals from a subset of movements of the Arm Motor Ability Test (AMAT) as inputs into a movement classification algorithm. The importance of a particular frequency domain feature, that is the ratio of the mean absolute values between sub-bands, was discovered in this work. An average classification accuracy of 75.5% was achieved using the proposed approach with a maximum accuracy of 100%. The performance of the proposed method was compared with results obtained using three other classification algorithms: support vector machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN), and probabilistic neural network (PNN) in terms of sEMG movement classification. The study demonstrated the capability of using upper limb sEMG signals to identify and distinguish between functional movements used in standard upper limb motor assessments for stroke patients. The classification algorithm used in the proposed method, EPNN, outperformed SVM, k-NN, and PNN.