A Versatile Program for the Analysis of Electromyographic Data

Abstract

Ergonomists and researchers often utilize electromyographic (EMG) recordings to produce estimates of muscular work load in occupational exposure assessment. Prolonged measurements, possible with recent technological advances in portable data acquisition and compact memory storage technologies, require efficient data reduction methods not always available in commercial software packages. The Iowa EMG Analysis Program (IEAP) was created to provide researchers the means to incorporate multiple processing techniques suited for the analysis of prolonged EMG measurements. IEAP currently includes subroutines to calculate the amplitude probability distribution function, exposure variation analysis, clustered exposure variation analysis, and gaps analysis profiles for up to four channels of root-mean-square processed EMG data. Data management functions include the creation of customized hypertext markup language (HTML) documentation and text files able to seamlessly incorporate analysis results into existing statistical software packages. IEAP is a powerful EMG analysis tool ideally suited for ergonomists and researchers involved in occupational ergonomics studies.

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