Muscle synergies to reduce the number of electromyography channels in neuromusculoskeletal modelling: a pilot study

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACTGraphical abstract. In the black squares, we present recorded experimental data. The black box on the left contains information about the experimental data used for calibration purposes, including kinematics, kinetics, and surface electromyography (sEMG) data. The black box on the right contains information about the experimental data used for testing the algorithm, which includes kinematics and a reduced set of sEMG data. In the red boxes, we depict two parallel calibration processes. The bottom red box outlines the muscle synergies calibration algorithm, which takes as input the sEMG recordings from the calibration set (black box on the left) and provides subject-specific parameters for reconstructing missing muscle excitations from a new set of collected sEMGs. The top red box illustrates the sEMG-driven musculoskeletal model calibration, which takes input from kinematics, kinetics, and sEMG data, yielding a calibrated model with subject-specific neuromuscular parameters. The blue box describes how subject-specific muscle forces are estimated from a new dataset with limited sEMG recordings. A complete set of muscle excitations is estimated based on these few recordings and the subject-specific parameters obtained in the muscle synergies calibration algorithm box. These excitations, along with the kinematics data, drive the calibrated musculoskeletal model obtained in the sEMG-driven musculoskeletal model calibration box. Dotted arrows represent inputs, and solid lined arrows represent outputs. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=112 SRC="FIGDIR/small/614668v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (36K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@74ae6org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@c6441aorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a145eeorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1f64500_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG