Determination of Muscle Power Using RMS of Electromyography for Stroke Survivors

Stroke is a threatening disease. Rehabilitation exercises can rehabilitate impaired limbs. Instead of using a manual assessment method of Medical Research Council (MRC) scale in muscle strength measurement, electromyography (EMG) is utilised to measure muscle signal. A two-channel surface EMG sensor is employed to measure biceps and arm muscles power. In this study, ten stroke patients and ten healthy persons were recruited to join the project. The patients were exposed to the EMG measurement throughout all the rehabilitation sessions. Overall root mean square (RMS) was used to determine the strength of the muscles. The result showed that the overall RMS value of impaired upper limb was averagely improved by 4.22% at the end of rehabilitation process. In the muscle power measurement, EMG signal measurement presented evident improvement (+2.43%) as compared to the MRC scale measurement (+0%). Therefore, EMG signal measurement can precisely describe the muscle power of the patients