Classification of surface EMG signal with fractal dimension.

Surface EMG (electromyography) signal is a complex nonlinear signal with low signal to noise ratio (SNR). This paper is aimed at identifying different patterns of surface EMG signals according to fractal dimension. Two patterns of surface EMG signals are respectively acquired from the right forearm flexor of 30 healthy volunteers during right forearm supination (FS) or forearm pronation (FP). After the high frequency noise is filtered from surface EMG signal by a low-pass filter, fractal dimension is calculated from the filtered surface EMG signal. The results showed that the fractal dimensions of filtered FS surface EMG signals and those of filtered FP surface EMG signals distribute in two different regions, so the fractal dimensions can represent different patterns of surface EMG signals.