A Biophysical-Model-Informed Source Separation Framework For EMG Decomposition
This work addresses the need for more accurate and interpretable neural drive extraction for applications in clinical diagnostics, prosthetic control, and neurorehabilitation, representing a novel method for a known bottleneck.
The paper tackled the problem of motor unit decomposition from surface EMG by introducing a Biophysical-Model-Informed Source Separation framework that integrates anatomically accurate forward models, achieving higher fidelity motor unit estimation and reduced computational cost compared to traditional methods.
Recent advances in neural interfacing have enabled significant improvements in human-computer interaction, rehabilitation, and neuromuscular diagnostics. Motor unit (MU) decomposition from surface electromyography (sEMG) is a key technique for extracting neural drive information, but traditional blind source separation (BSS) methods fail to incorporate biophysical constraints, limiting their accuracy and interpretability. In this work, we introduce a novel Biophysical-Model-Informed Source Separation (BMISS) framework, which integrates anatomically accurate forward EMG models into the decomposition process. By leveraging MRI-based anatomical reconstructions and generative modeling, our approach enables direct inversion of a biophysically accurate forward model to estimate both neural drive and motor neuron properties in an unsupervised manner. Empirical validation in a controlled simulated setting demonstrates that BMISS achieves higher fidelity motor unit estimation while significantly reducing computational cost compared to traditional methods. This framework paves the way for non-invasive, personalized neuromuscular assessments, with potential applications in clinical diagnostics, prosthetic control, and neurorehabilitation.