Authors

• Ignacio Rodríguez Carreño (irodriguezc@unav.es)
  Universidad de Navarra, Depto. Métodos Cuantitativos, Pamplona
• L. Gila Useros, A. Malanda Trigueros, J. Navallas Irujo, J. Rodríguez Falces ( )

Abstract
A new automatic method based on the wavelet and Hilbert transforms for measuring the motor unit action potential (MUAP) duration is presented in this work. A total of 182 MUAPs from two different muscles were analysed. The average MUAP waveform was wavelet-transfomed, and a particular scale of the wavelet transform was selected to avoid baseline fluctuation and high frequency noise. Then, the Hilbert transform was applied to this wavelet scale to obtain its envelope. Amplitude and slope criteria in this envelope were used to obtain the MUAP start and end points. The results of the new method were compared to the gold standard of duration marker positions obtained by manual measurement. These new method was also compared to two another automatic duration methods: a recently method developed by the authors and a conventional automatic duration algorithm. The differences between the new algorithms marker positions and the gold standard of duration marker positions were in some cases smaller than those observed with the recently published and the conventional method. Our new method for automatic measurement of MUAP duration is more accurate than other available conventional algorithms and performs better than the recent method in some cases.

Number of Pages:25

Creation Date:2008-12-19

Number:null/08