Forearm muscle activity estimation based on anatomical structure of muscles

Estimation of muscle activity using surface electromyography (sEMG) is an important non‐invasive method that can lead to a deeper understanding of motor‐control strategies in humans. Measurement using multiple active electrodes is necessary to estimate not only surface muscle activity but also deep muscle activity in dynamic motion. In this paper, we propose a method for estimating muscle activity of dynamic motions based on anatomical knowledge of muscle structures. To estimate muscle activity, a large number of signal sources are set in the muscle model, and connections between the signal sources are defined a priori based on the anatomical structure of the muscles. The signal source activities are first estimated by minimizing the Kullback–Leibler divergence with a continuity cost. Then, the muscle activity is computed from the signal source activity. In the experiments, five healthy participants performed five types of motion and the forearm sEMG was measured with 20‐channel active electrodes. The estimation results for these motions were visualized in four dimensions as the three‐dimensional position of the muscle over time. The results showed that the estimation was accurate, with a reproduction rate of 95% for the measured sEMG and continuity of the muscle activity. In addition, the results suggest the advantage of the proposed method over the conventional approaches in terms of estimating the muscle activity for both dynamic and abnormal motions.