It is always an honour to collaborate with new researchers!
In 2021, a team of researchers at the University of Bologna contacted MerloBioEngineering to discuss EMG data analysis for a new study on the effect of pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs) during cycling.
PEMFs are widely used in medicine to improve bone formation in osteoporosis and fractures, and to increase tissue oxygenation through microcirculation and angiogenesis.
New research based on surface EMG
Prof. Milena Raffi and Colleagues aimed to study the effects of PEMFs on muscular activity during physical exercise and sport. They enrolled twenty semi-professional cyclists and recorded the activity of vastus medialis and biceps femoris by surface electromyography (sEMG) during three different tasks:
- cycling at incremental load
- cycling at constant load without PEMFs
- cycling at constant load with PEMFs
Unfortunately, PEMFs dramatically affect sEMG signals, introducing large stimulation artefacts.
Custom add-on for EmgEasyReport
It was a pleasure to develop a custom algorithm, which is now available in EmgEasyReport.
First, the algorithm reduces the background noise and removes large and frequent artefacts. Then, a Smoothed Non-Linear Energy Operatory is applied to identify the stimulation-related artefacts. These are iteratively checked throughout the whole recording and removed. Next, the algorithm computes the RMS amplitude for all identified muscle onsets. Finally, values are normalized with respect to the maximum voluntary contraction, plotted, and saved in a CSV file. Noteworthy, this can be obtained with a single mouse click by selecting the proper function in the Research Tools menu!
Figure 1 shows an example of our work.
This collaboration allowed the Researchers to analyze a large amount of data quickly and with little effort.
Are you interested in the effects of PEMFs? Have a look at the full paper at this link. The EMG data analysis procedure is also detailed.
PEMF artifact removal with EmgEasyReport, before and after. Reproduced after kind permission of Healthcare.
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