Participants

• Faculty: Dr. Elisa Barney Smith, Dr. Michelle Sabick

• Students: Matt Cawley, Joetta Anderson, and Minh Lam

Description

The need for this project arose due to questionable results encountered by researchers in using their system for processing electromyography (EMG) generated data. The purpose of this project is to design a Graphical User Interface (GUI) driven signal/EMG processing tool to be used in processing EMG signals collected from human subjects engaged in various activities, such as jumping and running.

A GUI was developed by BSU students as part of a Senior Design Project under the supervision of Dr. Barney Smith. It runs under the MATLAB environment. It can load DICOM files, do amplification, rectification, multiple types of smoothing (RMS, mean, median) and filtering (Butterworth, Chebyschev I & II, Elliptical, Bessel, or user defined by transfer function). Frequency response of filter transfer functions can be seen graphically in linear or Bode plot forms. The original and processed EMG signals can be simultaneously shown in the display window. Muscle onset times can be identified with rules with variable parameters. These times are shown graphically on the EMG signal plots.

This GUI is the primary EMG analysis tool used by researchers in the Center for Ortheopaedic Biomechanical Research (COBR). Additional features (such as Power Spectral Density) are being added and the code is being fully documented. Researchers in the Biomechanics Lab indicate that it is much more user friendly than the commercial they purchased with their EMG acquisition system. Plans are to make the source code available without cost to other researchers outside of Boise State once final testing is complete. People interested in using this tool should contact Dr. Barney Smith with inquiries.

Publications

• Boise State Undergraduate Research Conference