title: A Lempel-Ziv complexity measure for muscle fatigue estimation.
abstract: This paper presents a Lempel-Ziv complexity measure for analysis of surface electromyography signals. The Lempel-Ziv measure provides a metric for the number of distinct deterministic patterns and the rate of their creation in signals. We propose a ternary Lempel-Ziv measure, improving upon the binary Lempel-Ziv measure, and making it more suited for the analysis of biological signals. The Lempel-Ziv measure is evaluated with a muscle fatigue experiment in which participants perform static, cyclic, and random contractions. Results show this complexity measure shows a greater correlation to a steadily increasing muscle fatigue level compared to the conventional median frequency. This measure is computationally easy to compute and does not require power spectrum estimation and signal stationarity assumptions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Canada. mehran.talebinejad@mail.mcgill.ca
authors.forename: Mehran
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Talebinejad
authors.forename: Adrian D C
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Miri
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D004056:Differential Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D004576:Electromyography / Q000379:methods*; D005080:Exercise Test / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009119:Muscle Contraction / Q000502:physiology*; D018763:Muscle Fatigue / Q000502:physiology*; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity