Applications in Proctology and Obstetrics

Effect of Massage on Clinical and Physiological Variables During Muscle Fatigue Task in Participants With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Crossover Study

“…The observed decrease in MF slope values indicates that participants in the control and massage conditions experienced muscle fatigue during the modified Sorensen test. 7 The MF value is considered a robust indicator of muscle fatigue 38 because it is less sensitive to noise 39 than other EMG parameters. The decrease in MF values was coupled to a significant decrease in MVC values after the Sorensen test (a decrease of 5% for the control condition and 8% for the massage condition).…”

Estimation of Work of Breathing from Respiratory Muscle Activity In Spontaneous Ventilation: A Pilot Study

“…From the last minute, variable epochs of at least thirty seconds of sEMG signals were selected, avoiding motion artifacts per epoch. Each signal was filtered with a 4th-order Butterworth 60 Hz bandstop filter and a FIR bandpass filter between 10 Hz and 500 Hz [31,32]. Furthermore, a 5th-order RLS adaptive filter was used to reduce cardiac artifacts [33].…”

The Effects of Different Vibration Frequencies, Amplitudes and Contraction Levels on Lower Limb Muscles during Graded Isometric Contractions Superimposed on Whole Body Vibration Stimulation

“…It has been shown that the choice of the window does not have a critical bearing on the spectral estimators like MEF and PSD (Farina & Merletti 2000). Further, for isometric, constant force and fatiguing contractions, the signal is regarded as stationary for epoch/window duration of 1 to 2 s. Previous studies suggest that epoch durations between 500 ms to 1 s provide better spectral estimation (Merletti & Parker 2004;Fratini et al 2009;Farina & Merletti 2000). Also, it has been shown that window overlapping does not provide any significant benefits (Farina & Merletti 2000).…”

“…The increase in the EMG amplitude also signifies modulation in the motor unit recruitment and/or motor unit discharge frequency. An increase in mean frequency (MEF) can signify the additional recruitment of superficially located high threshold motor units, as these motor units typically contribute large and sharp spikes which influence high frequency bands of sEMG (Merletti & Parker 2004), (Heckman & Binder 1993). The enhancement of the contribution to stretch reflexes with indirect vibration stimulation has been attributed to the possible recruitment of high threshold units and muscle fibres (Rittweger et al 2003).…”