Improving Fast EMG Classification for Hand Gesture Recognition: A Comprehensive Analysis of Temporal, Spatial, and Algorithm Configurations for Healthy and Post-Stroke Subjects

Electromyography-based assistive and rehabilitation devices have shown potential for restoring mobility, especially for post-stroke patients. However, the variability of biological signals and the processing delays caused by signal acquisition and feature extraction influence myoelectric control systems' real-time functionality and robustness. This study evaluates the classification performance of electromyographic (EMG) signals for six distinct hand gestures in healthy individuals and post-stroke patients. Different feature extraction methods and machine learning algorithms are employed to analyze the impact of acquisition time (0.5-4 s) and the number of channels (1-4) on model accuracy, robustness, and generalization. The best results are obtained using power spectral density and dimensionality reduction, reaching a classification accuracy of 94.79% with a 2 s signal and 95.31% for 4 s. Acquisition time has a greater effect on accuracy than the number of channels used with accuracy stabilizing at 2 s. We test for generalization using post-stroke patient data, evaluating two scenarios: intra-patient validation with 90% accuracy and cross-patient validation with 35-40% accuracy. This study contributes to developing effective real-time myoelectric control systems for neurorehabilitation.