LAUSR

Objective. A significant challenge in surface electromyography (EMG) is the accurate identification of onset and offset of muscle activation while maintaining high real-time performance. Teager–Kaiser energy operator (TKEO) is widely used in muscle activity monitoring systems because of its computational simplicity and strong real-time performance. However, in contrast to TKEO ontology, few studies have examined how well the energy operator variants from multiple fields perform in conditioning EMG signals. This paper aims to investigate the role of the energy operator and its variants in EMG change point detection by a threshold detector. Approach. To compare the stability and accuracy of TKEO and its variants for EMG change point detection, the EMG data of extensor carpi radialis longus and flexor carpi radialis were acquired from twenty participants operating a controller under normal and disturbed conditions, and EMG change point detection was performed by four energy operators and their rectified versions. Main results. Based on the ‘standard’ change points collected by the controller, the detection results were evaluated by three evaluation indexes: detection rate, F1 Score, and accuracy. The experimental results show that the multiresolution energy operator and the TKEO with rectified (abs-TKEO) are more suitable for EMG change point detection. Significance. This paper compared the effect of the energy operator and its variants on a threshold-based EMG change point detector. The experimental results in this paper can provide a reference for the selection of EMG signal conditioning methods to improve the detection performance of the EMG change point detector.