Inter-classifier comparison for upper extremity EMG signal at different hand postures and arm positions using pattern recognition

The utilization of surface EMG and intramuscular EMG signals has been observed to create significant improvement in pattern recognition approaches and myoelectric control. However, there is less data of different arm positions and hand postures available. Hand postures and arm positions tend to affect the combination of surface and intramuscular EMG signal acquisition in terms of classifier accuracy. Hence, this study aimed to find a robust classifier for two scenarios: (1) at fixed arm position (FAP) where classifiers classify different hand postures and (2) at fixed hand posture (FHP) where classifiers classify different arm positions. A total of 20 healthy male participants (30.62 ± 3.87 years old) were recruited for this study. They were asked to perform five motion classes including hand grasp, hand open, rest, hand extension, and hand flexion at four different arm positions at 0°, 45°, 90°, and 135°. SVM, KNN, and LDA classifier were deployed. Statistical analysis in the form of pairwise comparisons was carried out using SPSS. It is concluded that there is no significant difference among the three classifiers. SVM gave highest accuracy of 75.35% and 58.32% at FAP and FHP respectively for each motion classification. KNN yielded the highest accuracies of 69.11% and 79.04% when data was pooled and was classified at different arm positions and at different hand postures respectively. The results exhibited that there is no significant effect of changing arm position and hand posture on the classifier accuracy.