Electrode Density Affects the Robustness of Myoelectric Pattern Recognition System With and Without Electrode Shift

With the availability of high-density (HD) electrodes technology, the electrodes used in myoelectric control can have much higher density than the current practice. In this study, we investigated the effects of electrode density on pattern recognition (PR) based myoelectric control. Four density levels were analyzed in two directions: parallel and perpendicular to muscle fibers. Their influence on PR-based myoelectric control algorithms was investigated under three conditions between training and testing datasets: no electrode shift, 10-mm shift parallel to muscle fibers and 10-mm shift perpendicular to muscle fibers. The effect of electrode density varied among the different shift conditions: First, when there was no shift, increasing electrode density significantly improved the classification performance; second, when the shift was in the perpendicular direction, increasing electrode density resulted in deterioration in the classification performance; third, when the shift was in the parallel direction, the effect of the electrode density was more complicated-increasing the density in the parallel direction reduced the performance, while increasing density in the perpendicular direction would initially enhance the performance, but then reduce performance. To our best knowledge, this was the first study focusing on the role of electrode density in myoelectric control with the presence of electrode shift. Its outcome would benefit the design of electrode placement for future myoelectric prostheses with HD electrodes.