Correlation-based Method for Measuring the Duration of Motor Unit Action Potentials

Abstract

We present a novel automatic method for measuring the duration of motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) and compare it with two state-of-the-art automatic duration methods on normal and pathological MUAPs. To this end we analyzed 313 EMG recordings from normal and pathological muscles during slight contractions. A "gold standard" of the duration positions (start and end markers) was obtained for each MUAP from the manual measurements determined by two expert electromyographists. The results of the novel method were compared to those obtained by the two automatic methods using the "gold standard" duration measures for the different groups of normal and pathological MUAPs. Several statistical tests were applied and showed that the novel method provided closer duration positions to the "gold standard" and fewer gross aberrant errors than those obtained by the two other methods in the four MUAP groups, being significantly different in many of the cases.