Sheng-Yu Peng

Kuan-Chen Wang, Kai-Chun Liu, Sheng-Yu Peng et al.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) artifact contamination often occurs in surface electromyography (sEMG) applications when the measured muscles are in proximity to the heart. Previous studies have developed and proposed various methods, such as high-pass filtering, template subtraction and so forth. However, these methods remain limited by the requirement of reference signals and distortion of original sEMG. This study proposed a novel denoising method to eliminate ECG artifacts from the single-channel sEMG signals using fully convolutional networks (FCN). The proposed method adopts a denoise autoencoder structure and powerful nonlinear mapping capability of neural networks for sEMG denoising. We compared the proposed approach with conventional approaches, including high-pass filters and template subtraction, on open datasets called the Non-Invasive Adaptive Prosthetics database and MIT-BIH normal sinus rhythm database. The experimental results demonstrate that the FCN outperforms conventional methods in sEMG reconstruction quality under a wide range of signal-to-noise ratio inputs.

Yu-Tung Liu, Kuan-Chen Wang, Kai-Chun Liu et al.

Surface electromyography (sEMG) recordings can be influenced by electrocardiogram (ECG) signals when the muscle being monitored is close to the heart. Several existing methods use signal-processing-based approaches, such as high-pass filter and template subtraction, while some derive mapping functions to restore clean sEMG signals from noisy sEMG (sEMG with ECG interference). Recently, the score-based diffusion model, a renowned generative model, has been introduced to generate high-quality and accurate samples with noisy input data. In this study, we proposed a novel approach, termed SDEMG, as a score-based diffusion model for sEMG signal denoising. To evaluate the proposed SDEMG approach, we conduct experiments to reduce noise in sEMG signals, employing data from an openly accessible source, the Non-Invasive Adaptive Prosthetics database, along with ECG signals from the MIT-BIH Normal Sinus Rhythm Database. The experiment result indicates that SDEMG outperformed comparative methods and produced high-quality sEMG samples. The source code of SDEMG the framework is available at: https://github.com/tonyliu0910/SDEMG

Kaushik Lakshmiramanan, Vineeta Nair, Ching-Yi Lin et al.

This paper presents the design and implementation of an asynchronous delta modulator as a spike encoder for event-driven neural recording in a 65nm CMOS process. The proposed neuromorphic front-end converts analog signals into discrete, asynchronous ON and OFF spikes, effectively compressing continuous biopotentials into spike trains compatible with spiking neural networks (SNNs). Its asynchronous operation enables seamless integration with neuromorphic architectures for real-time decoding in closed-loop brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). Measurement results from silicon demonstrate an energy consumption of 60.73 nJ/spike, an F1-score of 80% compared to a behavioral model of the asynchronous delta modulator, and a compact pixel area of 73.45 um $\times$ 73.64 um.

Yihui Wang, Sheng-Yu Peng, Sahil Shah

This paper presents a fully synthesizable, treebased Address-Event Representation (AER) encoder designed for scalable neuromorphic computing systems. To achieve high throughput while maintaining strict compatibility with commercial EDA workflows, the asynchronous design employs a bundled-data protocol within a semi-decoupled micropipeline. The architecture replaces traditional transparent latches with standard edge-triggered flip-flops, enabling digital synthesis and place-and-route (PnR) using Cadence toolkits. A cross-coupled NAND-based random-priority arbiter is embedded within the encoder of each tree node to resolve event collisions efficiently. An 8-event AER prototype is fabricated in 65 nm CMOS technology utilizing a purely digital standard-cell flow. Post-fabrication silicon measurements validate the design, demonstrating a peak throughput of 33 MEvent/s and an average event latency of 50 ns, equating to a propagation delay of 17 ns/(event-bit). The design consumes only 435 fJ per encoded event.

Wei-Lun Chen, Chia-Yeh Hsieh, Yu-Hsiang Kao et al.

This study presents a novel approach to human keypoint detection in low-resolution thermal images using transfer learning techniques. We introduce the first application of the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test in thermal image computer vision, establishing a new paradigm for mobility assessment. Our method leverages a MobileNetV3-Small encoder and a ViTPose decoder, trained using a composite loss function that balances latent representation alignment and heatmap accuracy. The model was evaluated using the Object Keypoint Similarity (OKS) metric from the COCO Keypoint Detection Challenge. The proposed model achieves better performance with AP, AP50, and AP75 scores of 0.861, 0.942, and 0.887 respectively, outperforming traditional supervised learning approaches like Mask R-CNN and ViTPose-Base. Moreover, our model demonstrates superior computational efficiency in terms of parameter count and FLOPS. This research lays a solid foundation for future clinical applications of thermal imaging in mobility assessment and rehabilitation monitoring.