Multi-scale EMG classification with spatial-temporal attention for prosthetic hands

Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Engin. 2023 Nov 30:1-16. doi: 10.1080/10255842.2023.2287419. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

A classification framework for hand gestures using Electromyography (EMG) signals in prosthetic hands is presented. Leveraging the multi-scale characteristics and temporal nature of EMG signals, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is used to extract multi-scale features and classify them with spatial-temporal attention. A multi-scale coarse-grained layer introduced into the input of one-dimensional CNN (1D-CNN) facilitates multi-scale feature extraction. The multi-scale features are fed into the attention layer and subsequently given to the fully connected layer to perform classification. The proposed model achieves classification accuracies of 93.4%, 92.8%, 91.3%, and 94.1% for Ninapro DB1, DB2, DB5, and DB7 respectively, thereby enhancing the confidence of prosthetic hand users.

Keywords: Convolutional neural network; electromyography; multi-head attention; temporal aspect.