Evaluation of motor unit potential wavelet analysis in the electrodiagnosis of neuromuscular disorders.
BACKGROUND
Electrophysiological studies of human motor units can use various electromyographic techniques. Together with the development of new techniques for analysis and processing of bioelectric signals, motor unit action potential (MUAP) wavelet analysis represents an important change in the development of electromyographic techniques.


METHODS
The proposed approach involves isolating single MUAPs, computing their scalograms, taking the maximum values of the scalograms in 5 selected scales, and averaging across MUAPs to give a single five-dimensional feature vector per muscle. After Support Vector Machine analysis, the feature vector is reduced to a single decision parameter that allows the subject to be assigned to 1 of 3 groups: myogenic, healthy, or neurogenic. The software is available as freeware.


RESULTS
MUAP wavelet analysis yielded consistent results for the diagnostic index and muscle classification, with only 7 incorrect classifications out of a total of 1,015 samples.


CONCLUSIONS
This proposed approach provides a sensitive and reliable method for evaluating and characterizing MUAPs.
Military Institute of Health Service, Department of Neurology, 128 Szaserow St., 00-909 Warsaw, Poland. kaziura@poczta.onet.pl
Kazimierz
K
Tomczykiewicz
Andrzej P
AP
Dobrowolski
Mariusz
M
Wierzbowski
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D004568:Electrodiagnosis / Q000379:methods*; D004576:Electromyography; D006801:Humans; D009046:Motor Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009468:Neuromuscular Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D058067:Wavelet Analysis