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Published on: December 5, 2014
Use of the Teager-Kaiser Energy operator for muscle activity detection in children
Richard T Lauer1, Laura A Prosser
1Department of Physical Therapy, Temple University, 3307 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19140, USA. rlauer2@temple.edu
Insights
The Teager-Kaiser Energy (TKE) operator shows promise for assessing surface electromyographic (sEMG) activity in pediatric gait. This method offers improved detection of muscle activity in children compared to standard amplitude techniques.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Neuroscience
- Pediatrics
Background:
- Surface electromyography (sEMG) is crucial for analyzing muscle activity during gait.
- Accurate assessment of sEMG in pediatric populations, particularly those with cerebral palsy (CP), presents unique challenges.
- Existing methods for sEMG onset detection may lack precision in young children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the effectiveness of the Teager-Kaiser Energy (TKE) operator for assessing sEMG in pediatric gait.
- To compare the TKE method against a standard deviation (SD) amplitude threshold method and visual inspection for sEMG analysis.
- To determine the utility of TKE for children with and without cerebral palsy (CP).
Main Methods:
- sEMG data were collected from hip and trunk muscles in children with typical development (TD) and CP.
- Muscle activity duration was quantified as a percentage of the gait cycle.
- TKE and SD amplitude threshold methods were compared to visual inspection using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and Bland-Altman plots.
Main Results:
- The TKE operator demonstrated superior agreement with visual inspection (ICC: 0.45-0.89) compared to the SD method (ICC: 0.11-0.76).
- Bland-Altman analysis revealed a smaller bias and narrower 95% confidence intervals for the TKE method relative to visual inspection.
- The TKE method showed less variability and bias than the SD method when compared to expert raters.
Conclusions:
- The Teager-Kaiser Energy (TKE) operator is a potentially more accurate method for detecting sEMG activity in pediatric gait than traditional amplitude-based methods.
- TKE offers improved reliability and precision in analyzing muscle activation patterns in children, including those with cerebral palsy.
- This finding supports the use of TKE as a valuable tool in pediatric biomechanics and gait analysis research.
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the usefulness of the Teager-Kaiser Energy (TKE) operator to assess surface electromyographic (sEMG) activity from the hip and trunk muscles during pediatric gait in children with and without cerebral palsy (CP). Muscle activity was recorded from the trapezius, erector spinae, rectus abdominus, external oblique, gluteus maximus and medius, rectus femoris, and semitendinosus bilaterally in ten children with typical development (TD) and five children with CP ages 44.4 +/- 18.6 months. Duration of muscle activity was calculated as a percentage of the gait cycle, and compared to two common onset detection methods, a standard deviation (SD) amplitude threshold method, and the visual inspection from two raters (R1, R2). Relative and absolute agreement was determined using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and Bland-Altman plots. Of the two automated methods, the TKE method demonstrated better agreement with visual inspection (0.45-0.89) than the SD (0.11-0.76) method. The Bland-Altman plots indicated a smaller bias and 95% confidence interval for the TKE method in comparison to the raters (TKE to R1: -5, 113%; TKE to R2: 4, 95%; SD to R1: -24, 170%; SD to R2: -15, 151%). The use of the TKE operator may better detect sEMG activity in children than the standard amplitude method.
