%0 Journal Article
%T A preliminary investigation assessing the viability of classifying hand postures in seniors
%A Mojgan Tavakolan
%A Zhen Xiao
%A Carlo Menon
%J BioMedical Engineering OnLine
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1475-925x-10-79
%X Nineteen volunteers, including seniors (70 years old in average) and young people (27 years old in average), participated in this study and sEMG signals from four of their forearm muscles (i.e. Extensor Digitorum, Palmaris Longus, Flexor Carpi Ulnaris and Extensor Carpi Radialis) were recorded. The feature vectors were built by extracting features from each channel of sEMG including autoregressive (AR) model coefficients, waveform length and root mean square (RMS). Multi-class support vector machines (SVM) was used as a classifier to distinguish between fifteen different essential hand gestures including finger pinching.Classification of hand gestures both in the pronation and supination positions of the arm was possible. Classified hand gestures were: rest, ulnar deviation, radial deviation, grasp and four different finger pinching configurations. The obtained average classification accuracy was 90.6% for the seniors and 97.6% for the young volunteers.The obtained results proved that the pattern recognition of sEMG signals in seniors is feasible for both pronation and supination positions of the arm and the use of only four EMG channel is sufficient. The outcome of this study therefore validates the hypothesis that, although there are significant neurological and physical changes occurring in humans while ageing, sEMG controlled hand assistive devices could potentially be used by the older people.Improving independent living of seniors and maintenance of their autonomy are compelling research goals for our society. Some simple activities of daily living such as opening and closing the screw cap of a bottle or turning a tap handle can be difficult tasks for a senior. By increasing the age, the skeletal muscles lose their strength [1]. In order to do everyday simple operations, seniors would need using assistive devices that could provide an additional force for their hand movements and also train their muscles [2].A compelling challenge in the development of assisti
%U http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/10/1/79