Relationship of EMG/SMG features and muscle strength level: an exploratory study on tibialis anterior muscles during plantar-flexion among hemiplegia patients

Background Improvement in muscle strength is an important aim for the rehabilitation of hemiplegia patients. Presently, the rehabilitation prescription depends on the evaluation results of muscle strength, which are routinely estimated by experienced physicians and therefore not finely quantitative. Widely-used quantification methods for disability, such as Barthel Index (BI) and motor component of Functional Independent Measure (M-FIM), yet have limitations in their application, since both of them differentiated disability better in lower than higher disability, and they are subjective and recorded in wide scales. In this paper, to explore finely quantitative measures for evaluation of muscle strength level (MSL), we start with the study on quantified electromyography (EMG) and sonomyography (SMG) features of tibialis anterior (TA) muscles among hemiplegia patients.