A comparative study of denoising sEMG signals

Denoising of surface electromyography (sEMG) signals plays a vital role in sEMG-based mechatronics applications and diagnosis of muscular diseases. In this study, 3 different denoising methods of sEMG signals, empirical mode decomposition, discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and median filter, are examined. These methods are applied to 5 different levels of noise-added synthetic sEMG signals. For the DWT-based denoising technique, 40 different wavelet functions, 4 different threshold-selection-rules, and 2 threshold-methods are tested iteratively. Three different window-sized median filters are applied as well. The SNR values of denoised synthetic signals are calculated, and the results are used to select DWT and median filter method parameters. Finally, 3 methods with the optimum parameters are applied to the real sEMG signal acquired from the flexor carpi radialis muscle and the visual results are presented.