Wireless surface electromyography monitoring system for dysphagia evaluation

Abstract

Swallowing difficulty is also called dysphagia. It is usually a sign related to the problems of your throat or esophagus the muscular tube that moves food and liquids from the back of your mouth to your stomach. These diseases are the common problem in people who have problems of the brain or nervous system. Surface electromyography (sEMG) signals provide the valuable information about the changes in the muscle when measuring and analyzing localized muscle fatigue. Several previous studies have reported swallowing behavior by sEMG. But there are no objective methods to assess swallowing coordination. In previous studies, the sEMG system was usually bulk, and it caused inconvenience to the users. So, this study proposed the wireless surface electromyography monitoring system for dysphagia evaluation. In order to assess the more accurate coordination of activities, the cross-correlation coefficient was used to determine the correlation between the sEMG of different muscle groups. The experimental results show that the discoordination indexes for dysphagia patients are obviously greater than that of healthy subjects.