Extraction of EMG signal in a software compatible format from an online database using WFDB package

Summary The electromyography (EMG) is an electro diagnostic procedure for evaluating the electrical activity of skeletal muscles. It is very difficult to deduce the structure and activation of surrounding muscle tissue from needle-detected EMG signals and thus the extraction of information regarding presence, absence or severity of disease is not possible. The muscle morphology, activation and similarity with measured electromyographic signal features can be explored by comparison with simulated EMG signal. Evaluation of the data using such reference model will provide better understanding of the properties of muscles and their relationship to EMG signals. As the difficulty lies in the non-availability of standard EMG signal, the present work thus focuses on MATLAB implementation of needle detected EMG model introduced by Hamilton-Wright and Stashuk in 2005. The first step of analysis involves conversion of raw EMG signal from .dat format to .txt/.mat format which is achieved by using WFDB (Waveform Database) Software Package. In this research work standard simulated signals available in S002 dataset ( Hamilton-Wright and Stashuk, 2005 ) are extracted and the proposed procedure is presented in a detailed manner.