An accurate and computationally efficient quantitative analysis of electromyography (EMG) signals plays an inevitable role in the diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders, prosthesis, and several related applications. Since it is often the case that the measured signals are the mixtures of electric potentials that emanate from surrounding muscles (sources), many EMG signal processing approaches rely on linear source separation techniques such as the independent component analysis (ICA). Nevertheless, naive implementations of ICA algorithms do not comply with the task of extracting the underlying sources from a single-channel EMG measurement. In this respect, the present work focuses on a classification method for neuromuscular disorders that deals with the data recorded using a single-channel EMG sensor. The ensemble empirical mode decomposition algorithm decomposes the single-channel EMG signal into a set of noise-canceled intrinsic mode functions, which in turn are separated by the FastICA algorithm. A reduced set of five time domain features extracted from the separated components are classified using the linear discriminant analysis, and the classification results are fine-tuned with a majority voting scheme. The performance of the proposed method has been validated with a clinical EMG database, which reports a higher classification accuracy (98%). The outcome of this study encourages possible extension of this approach to real settings to assist the clinicians in making correct diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders.

This paper presents a new hybrid approach integrating the cross-entropy (CE) algorithm and the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) technique to solve the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem related to electrical power generating units. Due to the introduction of the valve-point effect in the ELD objective function, the optimization task requires tools appropriate for a nonconvex optimization landscape. In this respect, we employ the CE approach, which constructs a random sequence of solutions probabilistically converging to a near-optimal solution and, thus, facilitating the exploration capability. Additionally, to fine-tune the solution in promising basins of attraction, the SQP algorithm is invoked, which performs a local search. Despite its reliance on a global heuristic scheme, CE-SQP is vested with fast convergence capability, which may entail its use for online power dispatch. The effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed method in comparison with several state-of-the-art approaches have been demonstrated with four standard test systems that are widely reported in the ELD literature.

Surface electromyography (sEMG) data acquired during lower limb movements has the potential for investigating knee pathology. Nevertheless, a major challenge encountered with sEMG signals generated by lower limb movements is the intersubject variability, because the signals recorded from the leg or thigh muscles are contingent on the characteristics of a subject such as gait activity and muscle structure. In order to cope with this difficulty, we have designed a three-step classification scheme. First, the multichannel sEMG is decomposed into activities of the underlying sources by means of independent component analysis via entropy bound minimization. Next, a set of time-domain features, which would best discriminate various movements, are extracted from the source estimates. Finally, the feature selection is performed with the help of the Fisher score and a screen-plot-based statistical technique, prior to feeding the dimension-reduced features to the linear discriminant analysis. The investigation involves 11 healthy subjects and 11 individuals with knee pathology performing three different lower limb movements, namely, walking, sitting, and standing, which yielded an average classification accuracy of 96.1% and 86.2%, respectively. While the outcome of this study per se is very encouraging, with suitable improvement, the clinical application of such an sEMG-based pattern recognition system that distinguishes healthy and knee pathological subjects would be an attractive consequence.

Surface electromyography (sEMG) records muscle activities from the surface of muscles, which offers a wealth of information concerning muscle activation patterns in both research and clinical settings. A key principle underlying sEMG analyses is the decomposition of the signal into a number of motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) that capture most of the relevant features embedded in a low-dimensional space. Toward this, the principal component analysis (PCA) has extensively been sought after, whereby the original sEMG data are translated into low-dimensional MUAP components with a reduced level of redundancy. The objective of this paper is to disseminate the role of PCA in conjunction with the quantitative sEMG analyses. Following the preliminaries on the sEMG methodology and a statement of PCA algorithm, an exhaustive collection of PCA applications related to sEMG data is in order. Alongside the technical challenges associated with the PCA-based sEMG processing, the envisaged research trend is also discussed.